"... my online activation failed because Serious Magic was no longer in business ..."

Hey, the company doesn't need to go out of business to cause a problem.  "Title Deko Pro" (an Avid product) used a server-based activation.  That server was shut down when they EOL Title Deko Pro and repalced it with Post Deko for Editors (at 6 x the cost).

Great point atomike,

Luca you are right that a professional should move to another NLE in that case. Without avid support and especially this forum keeping everything working 24/7 365 days a week is too big a risk.

But with a dongle you could keep it going longer.

And is it a plausible scenario?... Lets think. Medea, Pinnacle, Fast, Liquid, Matrox... Yeap NLE's and hardware manufacturers making hardware for Avid have changed owners in the past.

After having some PM with Todd and thinking the whole thing through for a day or 2 I have come to the following conclusion.

Part of the choice to go for SA is an ideology.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ideology

There is nothing wrong with that. But if you want others to adopt your ideology you have to convince them through debate and arguments.  And you haven't convinced me and as far as I see many others.

Normally when selling a product or feature you point out its advantages, "SA now washes your licenses more clean at 30 degrees", "better for the environment","better for your health", "and in 30% less time," etc...  So you point out towards established ideologies, "like a cleaner environment", "being more efficient"," being more productive".

In this case the ideology of SA seems to be avid having more control and having more profit as you do not point out any other arguments except the the stolen, lost, broken dongles. Is this Bad? It doesn't have to be. Depends on how well avid implements this thing and if avid stays in the market. But the reality is that SA was implemented with too many limitations compared to the dongle. Yes... you will do anything to improve SA so it works for 100% of your user base. I believe you. But a minority of your users having to come up with all the practical problems they will face with SA while you offer users no choice with new licenses and asking them to buy a support contract to keep using their dongles when upgrading shows to me that your ideology is definitely not shared by me!

luca.mg:

Randall L Rike:

"... would a dongle make any difference? ..."

Yeah,  After a hardwarwe crash, you could rebuild your system and still have a valid license via the dongle.  Yes, it would be stuck at that version, but always licensed.

And what will You do with such a machine when Your clients will ask for odorama editing or 3d audio or superdv 4:4:4 or whatever is coming next?

My MC Meredien v12 is still doing sterling work and just edited (off- and onlined) the BMW X6M launch video. The hardware is 8 years old, the software just a little bit younger. Up until a year or two ago there were several MC v7.2s working in Munich (TV movies, longform docs) and the (usually) former film editors who used them were very happy with their working pace . I cut a major prime-time doco last summer on a client's MCv10 (running on OS9!!!) Slow for me but supercheap for the producer

Our editing systems are major investments. SA seems to many of us to be tyng our businesses in a negative way to Avid. We've got big problems if Avid goes down, if Avid's server has a disruption, if Avid decides to alter its relationship with its customers, if Avid decides to phase out MC. In fact whatever Avid decides we have to wear. The dongle gives us autonomy, SA takes that away. That was a major USP for MC, sadly Avid seems to have no idea of the value of its product.

Humorous contributions to this discussion "like a meteorite could hit Tewksbury" forget that a meteorite just hit Lehmann Brothers, General Motors, Karstadt-Quelle, AIG and countless other places...

Rodney,

Whether SA becomes a reality or not, You can keep working with your meridians until they fall appart. No update expected for those ever again.

The problem is about people that want to upgrade or use MC 3.5 and later with a dongle.

jveekeres:

Rodney,

Whether SA becomes a reality or not, You can keep working with your meridians until they fall appart. No update expected for those ever again.

The problem is about people that want to upgrade or use MC 3.5 and later with a dongle.

My point about the old Avids is that, since they are dongle-based they can work for as long the computers they run on work or you can get parts for them. It doesn't matter what Avid decides or changes or even if Avid exists.

I'm not asking for/hoping for/needing any update. I thought my post was pretty clear.

luca.mg:

And what will You do with such a machine when Your clients will ask for odorama editing...?

But AVID already has odorama editing. Trust me. I make videos that stink all the time.

RodneyinMunich:

My point about the old Avids is that, since they are dongle-based they can work for as long the computers they run on work or you can get parts for them. It doesn't matter what Avid decides or changes or even if Avid exists.

I get what you are saying, and ran into a similar situation with Sapphire recently.  I'm in the process of migrating my workstation from an XW8400 to and XW8600.  Now in the past I'd go online to transfer my Sapphire license.  When I went to do it this time, the option was missing.  Upon contacting GenArts I was told that the transfer was no longer supported, and that I was welcome to upgrade to v3.

The problem with Dongle vs. SW Activation is one of control.  With the dongle, you can control when and if you want to upgrade.  With SW Activation, Avid decides.  In the short term this doesn't really matter.  But someone running 3.5.1 now may find themselves with a hardware failure 3, 4, 5-years in the future and could find that a reactivation call to Avid will result in a "no longer supported" response.

Hi Chris; not sure exactly what your situation is or was, but you should be able to transfer a dongle-based V2 Sapphire serial number... please give us a call or email support@genarts.com with all the details including the serial number in question and let's make sure this is squared away.

I don't know if this has been covered yet... but here's the thing I don't get with software activation and why I perfer a dongle. If I use software activation, my computer crashes and won't load.... how do I deactivate that copy so I can use it on another computer? More then likely I can't, correct? With a dongle, the computer goes, I still have my license... get a new computer, just pop the software into it and plug in the dongle.

Supposedly, in that scenario you would call Avid directly and they will de-authorize your system.  I think the situation we all fear is that if you were faced with that, but either can not make the call or there is no one available on the other end.  

After the IE8 issue I would like to add this point that I do not remember if it was mentioned by anyone.

I personally know people who are still using media composer 7.2 on mac os8. I admit ridiculous, but these avid's are still out there. More then 10 years old but still running.

If I want to keep using my MC3.5 for lets say another 5 years (is that too much?) then for the next five years the avid activation server has to be compatible with windows XP SP2 with IE6. XP SP3 with IE7, Vista SP1 with IE7 and Apple's safari of which I do not know its version structure now. It will also have to be compatible with IE8, 9, 10, who knows...

From experience I can tell that browsing the internet with IE5 on windows 2000 or Internet explorer on mac os9 is not the best experience.

Basically making this the question: How long will avid allow activation of its products and keep it technically possible?

jveekeres:

Basically making this the question: How long will avid allow activation of its products and keep it technically possible?

Amen, Brother!!!

I believe renaming this thread was WRONG and verging on being very disrespectfull to the original poster and the many subsequent posters expressing their views on this contentious issue.

The new heading is IMO deliberatly missing the point.

It is true software activation can only go forward. Why? Simply because it is totally incompatible with any earlier version than 3.5.

The cynical side of me looks at this lack of bacward support as Avid's way to insure you need to pay for 3.5 for every Avid you own if your facility wants software activation. Most of the markets (Edu and News) posting here that say they want SA have IMO always seemed to be very slow to uptake new versions.

If however you are like me who has in the past been an early updater to almost every paid version and you want to keep a dongle (so you can make occassional use of Avid CPU's that cannot handle the latest versions). You CAN but you HAVE to pay a annual software contract $995 for every dongle you choose to keep.

A good for Avid, old fashioned gotcha coming and going scenario that costs all of us as Avid clients