Steinberg's dongle alternative coming

Steinberg is much older than that. :wink:

I use this one for months now, and you may roll over it with your car without damaging it. Shouldn’t be too hard to use a case like this for the dongle:

It is on my bunch of keys, wanders from pocket to pocket, gets thrown around, and guess what - it simply works.

+1
{‘-’} (or like a woman) :slight_smile:

You have a dongle. It’s the same size as your house keys and car keys. Ask yourself how many times you have lost those EVER. And how many times have you seen car keys and house keys and dongles get lost. EVER.
If the answer is more than two then probably losing your dongle means that one is too dumb to understand Cubase anyway. :mrgreen: Honestly I do try to be nice. :laughing:

I have never lost a key to my home, but:

  1. I have BROKEN keys, quite a few times. I think I spent like EUR 1.000,- over the last 15 years for new locks, because of the broken keys

  2. Steinberg sadly decided to use the cheapest, most fragile casing for the dongle… the cheapest thing could come up with or so

  3. The contacts of the USB dongle are unprotected

  4. People in public transport in parts of Vienna… have you seen “28 days later”? Thats what it feels like to go to Reumannplatz or Transdanubia

I remember when RME first release the BabyFace, and they even came out and said that the Chinese makers did not make casings up to their standards, so it is quite possible that SB have not bothered to change anything since acquiring Syncrosoft.

I’ve had the same dongle for 15 years. Strapped onto my house keys when I go out with it. $1000 on broken keys! Is that because it’s cold where you are or do you hit them with a crowbar? 10c worth of oil would probably stop that.

Of course, a metal case would be more solid but please keep in mind that we do not produce them in quantities Patriot produces their USB sticks. This would result in a price increase for the USB-eLicenser. The new one will be shorter and we will have a look at the material again as well but chances are high that it will continue to be a plastic case.

hi Ed, how about offering users a choice?

That would be even more expensive :wink:

How about wood instead of metal? (no, I’m not kidding)

a smaller but yet plastic usb dongle is screaming “more fragile” to me, I (personally) don’t care about the size if it is robust (also, the more tiny the usb dongle is, more likely to be forgotten)

Patriot at least shows that there is a way to design an USB stick that is very stable and robust enough to be put on an average male’s bunch of keys and that survives it in the long run; that’s exactly what I would expect from a software dongle, too.

for who?
You, me or everyone?

Steinberg lets US pay for THEIR problem. So it would be more expensive for us, yes.

Coming from someone so knowledgeable in the field that conclusion seems rather simplistic.

Would it really? I mean, if people are having problems with the current ones, to the point of having to replace them, then wouldn’t better assembly and casings be cheaper in the long run? (At least for them.) I’d rather pay triple the price and having ten times tougher a dongle! :wink:

I have never had any problems with mine, but I wouldn’t mind a much smaller (shorter, as in not sticking out so much) and if I dropped it, I would just smile because it was all titanium. Help me protect my licenses! :slight_smile:

I find that the gen 2 iLoks seem more robust than the eLicenser, and they come with a little cap for protection. Besides, iLok has ZDT and with the new Loss and Theft option, it seems a much better system than eLicenser at the moment.

DG

Wrap key in some silly putty and have fun bouncing it around.

Aloha E,

Had the same thoughts but then realized;

Can we Cubase users get a blank dongle from
BestBuy or RadioShack or MonoPrice etc?

Don’t think so.

AFAIK we can only get a blank replacement dongle from Steiny.

So if and when your dongle starts packing its bags to head south,
there is only one game in town.

That being said;
I just can’t see Yamaha/Steinberg make a lot of $$$
from selling blank dongles, but however small the Cubase DAW base,
Yamyberg or Steinha do have this corner of the market sewn up.

So like many others I just gaffer tape the f*ck out of it,
(I leave a lil hole so I can make sure the red LED lights up)
put it on my keyring and bob’s yer uncle’.

IMHO
Users would be wise to have a spare (they are not too expensive) hanging around just in case;
and for mobile pros a total 2nd license would also be good insurance.
Pass the cost on to yer clients.
{‘-’}

For my real job, I have a 8 year old Sandisk 8 gb Cruzer thumb drive with a slide out connector on my key ring. It looks no different than the dongle except for the slide out connector…

That thing gets the s#!t beat out of it 6 days a week and has a backup of our accounting file on it. It is a critical backup. My dongle only sits in my desktop rear USB slot and has fallen apart several times. Someone here mentioned it fell on carpet and came apart…so did mine

No argument on how the Cubase security works only that if the license has such a value,give us an opportunity to preserve it. My wireless USB keyboard and mouse receiver stick out only 1/4".

I know this has been said over and over again but, WTF…can one more time hurt? Yep, I have a spare un opened for the last 4 years