CompuServe Messages

Well I use a program at work that has a dongle. This is a MS-Dos project management package that sells for $3000 US per copy. The dongle plugs into the parallel port and has a pass through for the printer. We have a dozen copies of the program (and of course a dozen dongles) but we have the program installed on many more machines. This arrangement is rather nice since we can't justify more legitimate copies based on our usage……however if someone needs to use the program they can just go borrow a dongle and work on their own machine rather than to have to go and use somebody else's machine. The company started with a dongle, then switched to a key disk, and then back to a dongle again. The key disk was a bit easier to move around than the dongle but it did cause p[roblems for people who were using our LANs. We have "lost" one dongle which cost us $75 to replace. Without a dongle I'm sure we would have many more illegit copies being used in spite of our clear cut policy against pirated copies. On the Amiga I have SPP and Designtext., both of which uses dongles. I rarely use the former but work frequently with the latter. I did misplace the DT dongle and a bit of panic finding it <it had fallen behind my desk along with a lot of other stuff including some cp'ed disks which I was also looking for…..however loosing it did result in my getting my den cleaned up, so it did have a side benefit!). Since I don't play games/use joysticks very often it isn't too much problem to leave the dongle plugged in most of the time. Naturally enough I would prefer not to use a dongle, but I can see some of the rationale for it as well as some of the benefits in an office environment as outlined in my first paragraph.