Protection schemes
Jim,
As I told Brian of 'DongleText' a good while back, when the dongle is in the
machine is not the problem. It is where the dongle is when it is not being
used. In the last 5 years I have had 2 clients who, against my advise, have
used dongle-protected software. In one case, his secretary's little boy, who
came to the office one Saturday with his mother while she picked up some
papers. He found the dongle in the desk drawer and proceeded to flush it down
the toilet. It was 3 weeks until he could get another one and the company
charged him the same price as if he had bought a new package. Needless to say,
after having to buy the program twice, he moved his data to another program and
never dealt with that company again (and, of course, will never buy a dongled
program again.)
The second client worked out of his house. While carrying some papers and
the dongle back to his desk to store safely away, he dropped the dongle on the
floor. His Great Dane jumped on it and headed out the back door. By the time he
chased the dog down, the dongle was a chewed-up unusable mess. In this case,
the company refused to sell him a new dongle, called him a 'pirate' (it didn't
matter that he had the master disk) and hung up on him. He had to order a new
package by mailorder. It took 5 weeks and he almost lost his business in the
meantime.
If little Johnny or the dog had chewed up the disk, my clients could have
merely got their back up copies out of the fireproof box and gone about their
business.
So, I restate what many others had said previously, DONGLE or COPY PROTECTED
software has no place in a business environment.
Greg