Erik,

That's not exactly true. Perhaps this is case of some poor protection for example with Keil. The fact is that you may have part of executable code inside dongle and this has to be loaded every some time. I know that Spectra or Tango software did not allow for running anytime you disconnected dongle. That's a good protection. Besides software can periodically check for variety of codes stored in dongle. I personally know a guy who broke some dongle many years ago (he does not do that anymore ;-), but it was rather poor protection for Paciolli to be corrupt in 80x86 protected mode or virtual mode :-(

There is many tricks how to protect software with dongle. The fact is that everybody should comply with license and breaking dongles or using them for multipe computers is serious violation. Now I do not consider dongle a convenient solution as it requires continuous abuse of connector. However I believe that license allows for installation on many computers, but only on use on single one - no simultanouous use on multiple computers. So it is enough to get that one dongle and hook it to another computer if user moves to another PC for work. Why should we look for ways to violate license.

At last, I believe that software manufacturers using this kind of protection allow for multi-user license... and multiple dongles for extra fee.


Best...