You are right with the Ethernet Card - and it is amazing how much folks once panicked when the Pentium III got the CPU serial, while most of them have the same sort of unique ID on their network card long time before and ever after without bothering... The problem with the Ethernet Card is that it is quite simple to disguise, hide or even "fake change" the serial with a bit of hacking tools. VPC, for example, can simply turn off the Mac card for the "PC" (for a performance boost) and thereby make the PC "cardless". The USB dongles would certainly be the best solution for a protection (and if you buy them from a good company they may be even able to supply older PC/serial or Mac/ADB ones on request). One of the official answers was that they are "expensive" (as if it would matter if a completely overpriced, useless-by-bugs piece of crashware gets up another $20 :-) and that "professional companies" are afraid that the dongles get stolen. That may (or may not) be true, but I guess the number of people who keep their money because of the virtual dongle is hardly any smaller... I got a dongle for Quark4 /Passport for about two years and it never caused any trouble - plugged it into the ADB socket, plugged the keyboard/mouse cable into the dongle socket, and then forgot about it. Now I got Quark5/Passport, and the dongle - is gone! It was probably cracked just like every other protection before, virtual or real, it was extra costs, it upset customers, and so Quark simply decided to trust their users again. Thank you Quark, you are a great company! I am absolutely convinced that the best protection is to CARE about the user, and to give the legal and honest users a reward for buying the software (like a printed manual, etc.) rather than trying to punish everyone like a chemo-therapy. When I bought Carrara from Eovia and registered, suddenly a few weeks later I got a surprise update/patch CD by mail. Without requesting! Just - "thanks for buying our software, here's the latest bugfix". It's the pirates who need to run for the patches, the honest users get them for free, and without need to download, burn and backup... :-) However, if you try to squeeze out money of software which is buggy-like-hell and simply ignore user complaints, reports and requests (Hello Mac PPP!) you probably need to handcuff and gag users in order to get their money again & again... If InDesign made Quark change their user policy then it is HIGH TIME for a Poser competitor. 'Nuff said, MartinC