I realize that they have to protect themselves from pirating etc but there is something extremely unsettling about this subject. For people who are trying to purposely pirate this stuff I can see why this would be a convenient way to smuggle more instruments. However for someone like myself, I use a MacBookPro and I am CONSTANTLY (every day) taking my laptop on the road to do work. I mix, arrange and compose every day on the road. When I go to friends houses or to visit my parents, this comes with me so I can work on it in downtime, or to endulge my anxious mother who awaits my vocal accompaniments so that I may sing them for her (opera arias).
Do you have any idea how afraid of this little blue dongle I am? I look at it every time I pull it out gently praying I don't break it, or drop it out of my pocket while grabbing my credit card out of my pocket. I am afriad of putting it in my laptop bag that if I drop the bag I will break it. There is so much stupid unnecessary focus on this dongle for someone like myself who moves around with it daily that it's ridiculous. This only further enhances that annoyance and fear of losing it. I am now 10 times more afraid of this dongle learning what I have learned here. Just the idea that if anything happened to this other then breaking it (dropping it out of my pocket, someone stealing it thinking its a 2gigabyte memory stick and it looks pretty blue, I stick it somewhere I think its "secure" and secure it so much that even I don't remember where it is, etc.).
I have so many thousands of dollars in gigastudio samples (over 1 terabyte). I was slowly deciding that I would lean this way because of the amazing stories I hear of these Vienna libraries. However, if I ever ran into a situation with this dongle and couldn't get restitution by purchasing another dongle etc that would be the end of the line for me on this product. There is no way I am going to travel all over the country, and Mexico etc with this thing doing live performances and composing being terrified I will lose this thing and have to re-purchase my products. All it takes is one time giong through foreign customs and someone snatching it up and I am done for.
Sorry for the rant but this is a bit of a shock for me at the idea that I may be presented with a problem at the VSL door should something of this sort happen. It may never happen, but now the fear has been implanted and which for me removes some of my excitement for the whole process. Knowing that my hard earned money spent on the product isn't my life line, but in fact a 50 cent piece of fragile hardware most probably made in the cheapest 3rd world country known to man. The whole idea of this makes me begin to consider rolling back to my gigastudio solutions and dongleless solutions.
Cheers