I had an emergency over the weekend which both proves and disproves Dennis's worries.
My motherboard and main hard-drive crashed so I lost my e-licenser and had to reinstall it. That program is the one that Steinberg uses for anti-piracy protection for all its programs. When I reinstalled the e-licenser program it generated a new serial number for itself based on my current motherboard (and not the hard drive). So I was up the proverbial creek regarding using Dorico and any other Steinberg products (I have WaveLab and Cubase Elements 8). I did submit a support case report to Steinberg yesterday morning but I hadn't heard anything from them by this morning so I posted a "help" message on the Dorico forum at steinberg.net. I got an instant reply which asked whether I had tried the reactivation available through my account at Steinberg. I hadn't, so I tried it. It took all of about 30 seconds to reactivate all my Steinberg products on my computer with the new motherboard and new e-licenser installation, once I knew what to do. I simply clicked the "reactivate" button next to the appropriate product, entered the serial number from the new e-licenser installation and immediately I had a new activation code I could copy/paste into the e-licenser, then click the "get license" button and the product was activated. It's taken me much longer to type this than it took to reactivate all three software products. If I had known this, I could have been using Dorico again Saturday evening once I had rebuilt my computer with the new motherboard. All this is without the dongle, in software on this computer. And should I want to move to another computer, I can simply install the e-licenser there, get the new serial number and reactivate the software. So it can be a back-and-forth process as often as I would like, since activating a product in a new e-licenser installation de-activates it in the old e-licenser installation. But since I only have one computer I'll be using Dorico on at the moment, it's not an issue for me. Were I to have two computers which I wanted to work with Dorico on I'd simply invest in the dongle and move that between the computers. Now all I'm left with from the disaster is trying to get my ewql libraries reactivated. That, I'm afraid, seems as if it will take a lot longer (if ever). But since this is the first computer I've had that could actually make good use of these ewql libraries, I don't have any projects which rely on them so if it takes a while it's no big deal. It was very easy getting a new activation from both Sibelius and Finale so I can continue to use them on my laptop as well as my new desktop. So the software protection aspect of Dorico really isn't a big deal. David H. Bailey On 10/22/2016 7:58 AM, Dennis Bathory-Kitsz wrote: > Just a warning that Dorico uses Steinberg's awful protection system: either a > hardware dongle or a dongle-free download option that allows only one install. > > I will never put my work into the hands of this kind of system. I've watched > others with dongles see deadlines pass waiting for a replacement for a failed > dongle. And even the dongle-free system, without a second install, means any > failure that requires using a backup computer is impossible. > > I know some people have accepted this kind of corporate control of their work, > but I'm not one of them. I've campaigned against this nonsense for years. I'm > sorry Dorico is infected with it, because it appears that otherwise I'd try > using it. > > I'll stay with Finale's dongle-free, two-computer authorization. > > Dennis > > Two of my old pieces on protection: > 2003: <http://maltedmedia.com/books/papers/sm-copyp.html> > 1997: <http://maltedmedia.com/books/papers/s8-music.html> > > > _______________________________________________ > Finale mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale > > To unsubscribe from finale send a message to: > [email protected] > -- David H. Bailey [email protected] http://www.davidbaileymusicstudio.com _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list [email protected] https://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale To unsubscribe from finale send a message to: [email protected]
