As a developer, I understand the need for copy protection. My friends and I depend upon sales and royalties to pay the rent (and buy more hardware, software, to make better products, etc.) However, I hate dongles with a passion based upon 3dStudio's utter disregard of the problems their damnable dongle gave me. When you spend $3000 on a package, only to be repeatedly kicked out to DOS and called a pirate by the software, it is prety bad. When the company finally tells you that they know there is a problem and that you can buy the upgrade in 6 months which should patch it, it is heinous. I transferred my copy of 3ds, and haven't used anything with a dongle since. I don't mind the software checking my computer or my network. I do mind another piece of flaky trouble-prone hardware. We sole proprietors have to upgrade systems all the time. I have 5 nominally working computers, all of which need TLC to do their specialized job. I don't need any more grief. NO dongles!!! Carolly