I just got the new ilok for my Pro Tools. So sweet-all one piece solid metal and less than half the size of my cheap-ass plastic steinberg dongle that’s all held together with duct tape.
It’s hard to convey the sheer difference in quality with a picture, but I’ll try:
Some holder of cap on top would be good. I’m not sure where mine is.
My iLok 2 though is more clumpsy than Steinberg dongle.
And no stripes or rugged or anything on cap, so even that was a bit difficult to remove.
“cheap-ass plastic steinberg dongle that’s all held together with duct tape.”
Lol yup mines held together with duct tape too… They are a bit cheap aren’t they?!
I agree.
And to be honest, the jokes in the other thread about making the dongle of “unobtanium” or whatever when asked about aluminum rubbed me the wrong way. Brittle plastic is not the way to go.
haha…yup…duct tape! to the rescue
ps-i think this idea of a new dongle design would get more? traction if addressed to Syrcrosoft. JaT…
Yes, it’s scary to think we are relying on a $.25 dongle. I switched over to a soft license for Cubase, which is a good idea if you don’t need to be portable.
Be carefull what you wish for, they might reintroduce the printerport.
I must say it is odd that you can get a tiny nub of a flash drive yet Steinberg does not introduce a tiny dongle. I think many would pay twice the price for such a thing. No reason to be so big…
That one looks cute. Minimum risk for people on laptops to break it.
As it is now, you have to choose to have a sturdy key - and maybe break MB on laptop dropping in on the floor.
Or the key breaks - and your laptop is ok.
It’s probably not possible to make a eLicenser that small yet. But with hardware copy protection dongles, you have to find the right balance between making it tiny to make it harder to break but not so small that it’s impossible to find in a bag if you unplug it.
Steinberg introduced a smaller eLicenser some time ago. It’s slightly smaller than the new iLok.
The small size makes the plastic shell much less prone to breaking. It has been around for some time and so far I’ve only seen one report of that happening. Normal accidents are extremely unlikely to damage the circuit board.
I would still like to see a metallic eLicenser, but I think this new model should be good enough for almost everyone.
This is good to know-I didn’t realize that they had this new smaller version. The pic on Amazon is at an angle so you can’t tell that it’s a different size. I’m going to go ahead and order this new one because mine is starting to take on this scary angle where the USB connector meets the body of the dongle.
In your original photo, my 13 yr old dongle has 5 yrs of the fiberglass tape wrapped the same way. The computer has never been out of my home studio. Hard to believe that all of the bending has taken place just by moving the computer or upgrading the motherboards, memory or I/O cards. I’m very glad I don’t use a laptop or it would be significantly worse. My mouse receiver USB is probably 1/4" long and doesn’t even protrude beyond the case so it rests safely in the port.
Is there any proprietary element to the dongle? Could it be replaced with something like a mini memory USB stick?
You make a pretty good case for it so I’ll upgrade to one. One of mine just got a hole on the side of it, which is puzzling since it’s just left in my desktop PC… Maybe it got nudged.
PS: Oh hi Romantique~
Is there any proprietary element to the dongle? Could it be replaced with something like a mini memory USB stick?
It’s not a storage device, rather it decrypts messages your software sends it to prove you really have a license. (iirc)
