However, I don't like dongles or activation/deactivation schemes.  (I know the "dongle" in this case would be a USB network adapter.)  They are a pain, especially when I am 60 miles away from my office at a client's office with my laptop having forgotten to bring the dongle or to deactivate my desktop before leaving my office.  When I am demonstrating, installing and testing a system for a client, I am often going to the client's site and returning to my office to do more work daily.

Surely you could come up with a way for me to activate both my desktop and my laptop without using a dongle.  Perhaps allowing no more than two computers to be activated within a certain time of each other, say a few hours?  I would rather have to reactivate both machines on the extremely rare occasion when I replace the computer or network card than screw around with activation/deactivation or a dongle regularly.  True, you run a small risk of somebody installing on two machines used by different developers in the same office, but I expect those users wouldn't buy two licenses and might not buy one if they couldn't cheat.  No security system is 100% foolproof.  (I can think of a couple ways this one can likely be defeated.)  I believe it is better to cut legitimate users some slack than to annoy them trying to nail that last cheater, who probably wouldn't pay anyway.

This is really an expression of my philosophy as a software developer rather than an attempt to coerce a change.  I'm not going to pretend that this alone is a major factor in purchasing StrataFrame.  But if I look at another product that is about equal in my view and costs 10% more without the activation annoyance, I'ld consider that price difference easily wiped out.  Do you think 10% of your users would cheat?  How many of those cheaters do you think would pay instead of looking elsewhere?

Additionally, within the next week you will be able to give yourself a manual activation as well from this same console.

We appreciate your input, but we have spent an inordinate amount of time trying to protect oursleves from theft.  We wish that the world was a place where we could go on a handshake, but this is unfortunately not the case anymore.  You are correct in that most all of our users are very honest people and would never intentionally steal. 

I appologize if this system frustrates you, but this is not likely to change.  I also appreciate your input.  However, I will admit that this is the first complaint that I have seen thus far.  It seems to me that once users understand the many different ways they can activate they find one that will best suit them.