On Wed, Apr 25, 2012 at 10:43 AM, Joel C. Ewing <jcew...@acm.org> wrote: > > A dongle definitely could be an issue for some. Might be less of an issue > on Linux, but my experiences on Windoze has been less than ideal and makes > me regard any application that requires a dongle as more of a gamble. While > the dongle may be regarded as "nice license insurance" from the software > vendors standpoint, it is essentially just another point of failure for the > user and lowers the value of the product. > > My wife has some very expensive Embroidery software that requires a dongle. > The license does entitle her to run the software on multiple platforms, > both her laptop and desktop, since the dongle prevents concurrent use. After > a year or so the dongle case became too loose to remove the dongle from the > USB port - the only way now is grasp and pull the dongle base with a pair of > needle-nose pliers, which works, but is certainly not the advertised > convenience. The only "support" provided by the application vendor to remedy > this situation is to re-purchase the software at full price to get a new > dongle. > > Other than using standard Windows GUI interfaces, this software does nothing > that special at the Operating System level, except for the dongle support > that requires a hardware driver written by yet a different vendor. Logic > would suggest that this application should be able to migrate from Win XP to > Win 7 without a problem, provided one can find support for the dongle on Win > 7. My initial attempts to migrate have so far failed because the dongle > vendor's current drivers for Win 7 are not compatible with the older version > dongle that came with the application. I haven't given up, but unless I can > locate a compatible driver that is also compatible with Win 7 this expensive > application is toast on Win 7. A nice result for the application vendor if > I'm forced to do an otherwise unnecessary upgrade at great cost, but from > the user's standpoint this is a very poor outcome, apparently forced by the > decision to require a dongle. > > -- > Joel C. Ewing, Bentonville, AR jcew...@acm.org >
I had a USB Verizon celluar modem case fail and got it replaced under insurance. Now I put it on a USB Male A - Female A cord. -- Mike A Schwab, Springfield IL USA Where do Forest Rangers go to get away from it all? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@bama.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
