On Sun, 2007-03-25 at 12:12 +1200, Jinx wrote:
> > And I rejected it because the company will use my money to
> > develop their dongle crap
> > 
> > Again, I've wasted HUNDREDS of hours due to issues like this,
> > as a result I will avoid any company (as much as possible) that
> > uses crap like that.
> 
> Herbert, you seem to be really down on dongles. What was the
> nature of your bad expereience ? Is it a problem you see with
> dongles per se or was it you unfortunately got burned by poor
> design(s) ? 

No clue, have seen quite a few dongles just "stop". On top of that is
new OS's not working with the dongles (and the company not releasing new
drivers since the software I'm using is "no longer supported"),
companies only offering lpt dongles (despite that port being gone from
most PCs), poor drivers (problems like what people here have described
with regards to ICD2 drivers). The BIGGEST issue is you have to hope and
pray that the company continues to exist. Have encountered problems with
dongles and then discovered the company went belly up, so zero support.
All of a sudden the thousands of dollars we've spent on a piece of
software, and the hundreds or thousands of man hours spent learning the
software, is down the drain.

> Obviously everyone wants to steer clear of crap, but
> can you tar every dongle with the same brush ?

Yup. Since they are easily bypassed or cracked (try a google search on
pretty much any "dongle software", you'll find many have easy cracks to
get around) what is their point? They don't really stop piracy, they
have a REAL chance of pissing off your customers, why bother?

> When you say "as much as possible", that would be some reluctant
> acceptance of the fact that sometimes it's unavoidable to use things
> you don't like. So what qualities do you look for and what assurances
> would you insist on ? 

The only way I'd go with a piece of software that had insane
restrictions on it is if there was no other equally functioning option.
Unfortunately there are a few cases where we've had to do this. 

> I ask out of personal interest, not to put you
> on the spot or make you justify any decisions

No problem, but trust me, if you had as many issues with "protections"
on software as I've had, your opinion would at least be closer to mine.

TTYL

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