I searched the forums trying to find a clear answer with two questions I have before purchasing Artist. By the way, except for GarageBand for IOS I have no other experience with DAW.
I understand that I can run the application on two computers but not at the same time because of the USB dongle. My main concern is the project file sharing.
If I am working on a project on my PC laptop and then want to continue later in the day on my PC desktop how can this be achieved without the cumbersome process of copying the project file to a USB drive on the laptop and then taking the drive and inserting it into the desktop. I want to be able the access the file from a cloud or if not a cloud then transfer by wifi.
Is this possible? Is there a cloud service that Cubase within the application can connect?
In one post I read someone stated an issue with Google Drive but did not offer a solution or at least an alternative.
Using Adobe Photoshop and Lightroom on a Dell desktop and two iPads was I spoiled to be able to end work on a photo with an iPad before dinner and then sitting down on the desktop and having the photo available.
I am probably opening up a “can of worms” with the dongle but this is the 21st century. This dongle is so 1990’s. I lived 52 years in the 20th century and even after the advent of the personal computer every other software developer uses access codes. Even without owning Cubase as of yet, I can see potential issues of forgetting the dongle when I am out with the laptop or losing it or it stops working. I have been doing a lot of research on DAW’S and had people comment that they would not consider Cubase because of this.
But I would if was easy answer to share files.
Thank you all for reading this and if anyone could help me that would be most appreciated.
If you network the two computers together over ethernet, you can just use the hard drive on the laptop from the desktop computer. For a PC, you just create a homegroup on each and either enable to share the entire laptop hard drive or just your Cubase projects folder with the desktop computer. The ethernet cable can be pretty long and not cause any issues so you can run it from another room.
Then all you have to do is just unplug the dongle which only takes a second.
This allows you to take your laptop around which will always have your songs on it and you just plug it back into Ethernet at home when you want to access the drive from the PC and work on it.
If the two computers are both connected to the same wifi, yes you can ‘share the files via wifi’ using the same homegroup method but it’s not going to be fast enough and you’d be better copying the files over wifi. An actual ethernet cable between them is the way to go because you don’t need to copy the files at all and run the laptop hard drive from the PC just like it was a hard drive inside the PC.
My argument would be, if your laptop can run your songs, why don’t you just use it at home instead of the PC? Modern laptops are very fast. You don’t understand all the problems you will face in the future by running two systems. Cubase is just the DAW. It’s likely you’re going to purchase 3rd party plugins also. You will have more problems than the dongle by trying to open up songs on two different systems. Every time you update a plugin on the desktop, you will need to update it on the laptop. Every time you install a new plugin on the desktop, you need to install it on the laptop. Every time you create a preset within Cubase, you’ll need to keep copying over your presets to the other system. Eventually they’ll be too different from each other that your songs won’t open and you’ll consider using something like Acronis to mirror the system onto the laptop but then anything that’s not on the dongle and uses a serial won’t work as the serial is linked to the hardware ID of the desktop and you’ll need to purchase two serial numbers for every plugin you use that doesn’t use a dongle which means buying every plugin twice and then one system will have different serials to the other and then you can’t keep using Acronis to keep them in sync because activation will keep getting messed up as it will wipe the old serials and place the ones from the other computer on there and you’ll keep having to go back to emails to find the different serials each time you wipe the system. Sounds complicated right? Because it is!
Trust me, once you expand your plugins you’d be in a world of pain. I know because, this is what I had to do before laptops became fast enough. These are the struggles most young people will never know because laptops are so fast now. Now I just put all my money into getting the fastest possible laptop at the time and use that for my desktop. You might wanna look into high end gaming laptops with thunderbolt. They’re probably faster than your desktop PC and you can take them around with you. Even slow thin laptops these days are pretty fast and might be fast enough for you. It’s just not worth working on two different systems if you don’t have to. Cubase and the dongle is not the problem, it’s the 3rd party plugins and the ones that don’t use a dongle that are the problem if you wanna do what you’re suggesting as it doesn’t make sense to be buying two of all of your non-dongle plugins. You might hate the dongle now but if you actually try to use two systems, you will hate anything that’s not on the dongle as you have to buy two copies of it. Just use the laptop for everything. You don’t have to deal with 1990s problems in 2019. It’s best just to use the one system. If you wanna make music on the go, just use the laptop. All the other young guys are just using laptops for everything now.
Thank you for your response. You have enlighten me by making my worst fears a reality. 
. I think using the desktop is the answer.
Thanks again.
****rvenneman I guess you’re on mac so the windows folders below do not aply to you, but probably someone can explain where all this located on mac.
My advise:
Just buy 2 identical 2tb or bigger external usb drives, start using them for your cubase projects instead of the computers internal disks…
Put all your cubase project folders on one of the disk, make a backup on the other drive to be safe. Label them (disk one: projects, disk two: project backups…)
Keep your cubase dongle with the disk you travel with. (I travel with my backup disk)
To be absolutely safe, also sync one of the disks to an online storage sevice like dropbox or Stack.
Now you can open all your projects using any computer that has cubase and your plugins installed, and you also have have a backup…
Use software like BeyondCompare or something similar to sync the two disks.
I also have a folder containing a copy of the following folder: C:\Users\username
the folders that contain your presets and settings are:
C:\Users\username\AppData\Roaming\Steinberg\Cubase 10_64
C:\Users\username\Documents\Steinberg
C:\Users\username\Documents\VST3 Presets