I love my Steinberg dongle, its cute and sits there in a corner with a pulsing red heart beat like a little tamaogotchi, combined with the iLocks awesome electric blue glow its like something out of Tron (80’s fan boy) I dig it! 
It annoys ME so there goes your argument.
Additionally eLicenser supports a ‘soft’ dongle which is tied to the computer. Annoyingly Steinberg do not permit this to be used, meaning instead that I must waste a USB port. This is one reason I will never use Cubase on stage as I only have 2x USB ports on my laptop which get used for keyboard and audio interface, and no, I’m not having a stupid USB powered hub hanging off my laptop being something else that can potentially go wrong. Ableton got my money for that application.
What annoys me is the impossibility to pass my cubase AI 6 licence from the dongle to my laptop (hard to soft) Now, I just own a AI licence that is useless 
Just like the OP you should have done some research…
How is that useless? Plug the dongle in and use the software.
J.L.
Who’s arguing? 
The comment I responded to stated that “the USB - key to Cubase only benefits Steinberg and annoys the user.”
I was simply stating that it doesn’t annoy all users, “me” being one. Jeez, relax.
My main gripe, actually, is that on Cubase Elements 6 I used the Soft e-liscencer, cause I had only downloaded it rather than getting a boxed product. Steinberg has an entire piece of software it makes you download that’s a control center for eLicenses. Yet there’s no way to convert the USB licence to a soft license.
There’s lots of kinds of expensive software that doesn’t require you to always have a USB drive plugged in to use it. And since Steinberg has the technology available to have a software-licenser it just bugs me they don’t offer that option when buying a boxed product.
And, for the record, “you should have done more research” is hardly an argument for why the product should have such an inconvenient licensing method. I was researching the program’s features. I just assumed that their licensing method would be reasonable. (i.e. I would be able to convert hard-to-soft.) What if every piece of software you bough needed to have a USB license? But, anyway you look at it, it’s a minor gripe. I’m really loving the software. The new aesthetic is much “cooler” than CE6 and I am extremely impressed with Padshop and Retrologue.
And come on, you can’t compare it to a goddamned car key. That’s an entirely different situation. There are tons and tons of pieces of software that people might have running on their computer. Making one of them also require you to keep track a piece of hardware, ESPECIALLY if they have a soft-licensing system ALREADY IN PLACE is criminal.
Well “kind of useless”, I mean Why should I use AI if I can use C7?
Would be nice If for some reason I forget the dongle home be able to use AI 
i have cubase Ai 5 with soft license… (didn’t know there is cubase Ai 7.)
i installed it directly to my computer without needing the dongle, Ai versions should be soft licensed and working without the dongle !
Sorry It’s AI6 not 7 (or 5)
The eLicenser technology has the ability to transfer licenses to and from a dongle to a computer, but the license must be marked as being allowed to be transferred - Steinberg don’t allow transfers to the ‘soft’ eLicenser, but they do allow one-way transfer from the soft-licenser to a dongle.
I’ve pulled them up on this several times but their official excuse is it’s apparently ‘easier for the user’ if they do not allow the license to be transferred.
Go figure.
One thing that really annoys me are the people with the attitude of ‘Well I don’t want to transfer it therefore YOU don’t either’. This is stupid and short sighted - I will be the judge of what is best for my situation thankyouverymuch and what difference does it make to you what I do with my license anyway? Who is saying you can’t stick with your dongle? If you want a stupid piece of plastic sticking out of a valuable USB port, keep it. What’s the problem?
Allow those of us who don’t want to waste a USB port and are happy to use the soft-licenser to do so.
/rant
Exactly!
Pd:
LOL
It doesn’t annoy me. It sits on a USB hub and I can pretty much forget it even exists. I also have another dongle (iLok, with dozens of licenses on) and it doesn’t bother me either. Never had a single malfunction with either system.
What you could do is put AI6 on a different dongle - so you could still keep your expensive Cubase license/dongle safe at home while using AI6.
Steve.
Some of us have been around before dongle days. At first…lots of resistance …but now not so much. I personally like that it keeps the user forum legit. We know that we’ve all made an investment into a product we help steer. I’m ok with it for that reason.
Yes. Remember waiting for the CD to be scanned block by block when you needed to reinstall Cubase?
That could be, still the problem of “if I forget the dongle” can happen 
Also, get a new dongle isn’t very easy in my country.
+1
Or even worse, having to enter something like AHG038JPOB5ELMUAHSC8BV439KTQIRO0JU printed on a paper card in a font which made it impossible to tell if a character was a zero or the letter O - so it took multiple attempts at entering it before you got it right.
And don’t forget how ugly these forums were before only verified owners could participate, all those idiots with cracked copies demanding folks answer the dumbest questions.
Initially I disliked the dongle. But now I think it is great as it allows me to install Cubase on as many systems as I want and easily move the license from one to another to suit my needs (including an old XP box running C5 with some plug-ins that were never updated to work on Vista and beyond).
A key (or license) enables legal use and prohibits illegal use, so I would not label the comparison as being “invalid”.
The eLicenser obviously annoys many users. Though I’d like to see your argument about how it only benefits Steinberg.