@Pingu said:
I'd love to hear them explain what the charge is for. A handling fee I can understand, but that should be it.
That's easy.
We have to pay these license fees to Steinberg/Syncrosoft for all needed additional licenses.
By the way, if the dongle dies because of a malefunction of the dongle itself (not damaged by the user) within the product guarantee period, all needed new licenses are of course replaced for free.
best
Herb
Hi Herb,
I certainly wouldn't say you guys are money grubbing or whatever, very far from it. I've loved your software for the three or so years I've used it (except of course for the nasty dongle problems that all Mac and Logic users seem to experience from time to time, but that's once again the fault of the dongle, and perhaps Apple, not of your company). Even before I owned the software I loved it - throughout high school I used to check up on the VSL page every week or so to be amazed by the demos you guys were putting up. It was a serious thrill to get enough extra scholarship money from my college to finally be able to afford the Special Edition back in 2007.
However, as a student, this arrangement simply seems to be pricing me out of VSL. I had ideas of slowly acquiring all of your various instruments by reinvesting money I had earned through film scoring, which I've already started to do last year (hence why I have 5 licenses instead of the 1).
I suppose knowing what I know now, I would never keep more than 2 or so licenses on a single dongle, although this certainly seems daunting simply from a USB perspective (I'm sure pro users have one or more USB hubs devoted entirely to Vienna dongles). But also, I bought the software with the belief that I could use it with relative confidence for decades, maybe. Afterall, I'm still using the basic license I bought for software like Sibelius and Kontakt many many years ago (admittedly with upgrade fees every few years, but of course those fees are for new functionality). Hopefully you can see why this event has shaken my confidence in being a VSL consumer: until I'm at a point in my life where I can simply throw money at problems to fix them, it doesn't seem as unambiguously worth it as it did before.
I've been very impressed by your company's willingness to talk over these issues, and hope that it will continue.
Thanks,
Michael