I just received an interesting E-mail from MI7, the Steinberg distributors.

Here’s what they are trying to tell me:

As from today we can no longer replace stolen or lost USB keys. This is due to a new policy from Steinberg. We ask everyone to have understanding about this.

Here are the guidlines we have got:

1. Customer has lost his USB Key:
Customer has to buy a new licence (i.e. product). Having this covered by an insureance he can get compensation from his insureance company.

2. Customers USB Key was stolen:
Customer has to buy a new licence (i.e. product). Having this covered by an insureance he can get compensation from his insurance company.

3. Customer has defective Steinberg Key within the sealed package:
MI-Seven have to replace Steinberg Key for the customer.

4. Customer has negligent damaged his Steinberg Key:
Customer has to buy an empty Steinberg Key. Activation codes can be replaced by MI-Seven, if we receive the damaged Steinberg Key and the Key number is readable or all registration data is available.

Thanks for reading. If you have any questions please email us at info@mi7.com.
The MI7 Team.

Take note, many typos in the above text: ‘guidlines’, ‘licence’, ‘insureance’. I mean, my English is far from perfect, but those guys are funny too 🙂

For those of you who don’t know what a dongle is; a dongle is an USB-stick which is used as copy-protection for some software. It doesn’t have many fans because:

• It causes serious trouble on some systems
• With a laptop, those USB-sticks are sticking out, so there’s a danger of breaking them easily
• You always forget to take them with you when you take your laptop somewhere
• They are easy to steal, they are small
• It simply doesn’t work. Some people who have bought the official version of Nuendo are using a cracked version because they had trouble with the dongle. This cracked version has the same bugs as the official release except for the dongle problems.
• If you loose them, Steinberg says you need to buy a new license. And Steinberg software (for example Nuendo) ain’t cheap!

I need to say I am not a happy Steinberg customer. But this makes things even worse I guess. I would really prefer a program which runs without the need of a dongle. Propellerhead Reason, ReCycle, Ableton Live and even Steinberg’s Wavelab for example.

I think it’s time for some smart kids to re-engineer the program. Wouldn’t it be better if we all could use the official version without a dongle?

And how much will a dongle cost you? One dollar, two dollars maybe? Sure, a new license is a better deal for Steinberg, mo’ money. But man, I would really feel bad about it when I would loose my dongle. I would be pushed to pay again for another package. And what will I recieve? The same old package with the outdated version on the CD-rom I already have (and never got installed because it had 45 official reported bugs), an instruction manual you already had. So you’re only paying for a dongle and a new registration number? Steinberg, what were you thinking? Time for a donation button? Steinberg Open Source 🙂