Once again, here at the words from Antoine, the humble technician. These are NOT official statement or anything like this, just elements of response to feed the reflection.
Very well, I am up for hearing your take at any rate, being that you are a technician for the company. I understand your statements are not official.
Well, the reasons why native 1.x users shall stick with the hardware dongles are purely technical. When these versions have been released, the Soft-eLicenser did not exist, and the licenses could only be transfered from one hard-dongle to another hard-dongle, not on a soft-dongle that simply did not exist. That's all the story.
Backing themselves into this technological corner, if you will, with these dongles is not a wise development. It is outright unfair to me, as a faithful customer of Arturia for a few years now, (the company so eloquently refers to me as "native 1.x user" to be technical), to learn that I am forced to use a dongle for two softsynths of which the now privileged V2 generation customer will not have to be slave to. There should be a way to circumvent having a customer tied to a third-party peripheral storage device they do not wish to have. It takes up enough physical space to provide interference with certain setups, such as mine. That is what I say to that statement. It is so that I cannot use the two synths in question most of the time because of this and that is a costly loss to me as a "native" V COLLECTION customer.
More, the eLicenser/Syncrosoft is a third-party technology acquired by Steinberg, we have strictly no control on its development or orientation, except choosing it or not (but that is another debate).
This does not involve the customer.
Why shouldn't Arturia organize the return of thousands of hard-dongles and release soft-licenses in return? I let you imagine the logistics hell and outrageous cost of such operation, with a strict 0€ income (barely the same in USD).
Pardon me, but I do not see the problem, from a customer standpoint. The way I see it, if I am to apply logic from the outside, these dongles can be done away with by the end user upon becoming obsolete. Of course the old serials would become obsolete WITH the dongle at that point, that much I can fathom. Arturia can demonstrate good customer service by actively developing viable methods to update dated systems (such as USB dongles) to meet the need of a modern customer. It should not be so much a matter of "cost" as it should be a matter of convening and discussing the technicalities of how to go about getting the "native (faithful) 1.x" customer his/her new serial, if they so desire it. These 'seemingly' small considerations are what a makes a decent company a great company, especially in the eyes of its existing customer base.
Also, some people here certainly have experienced a hard drive crash in the last months, losing all their licenses stored on their Soft-eLicenser. Then post a Tech Support inquiry, give elements of verification, wait for new codes, etc. while stalled all the serious projects with strict deadlines... Yep, you got it: the hellish situation.
It's funny. The way I see the particular situation you are describing is that it is the
responsibility of the
modern software manufacturer to produce this service. You either offer the option to recover the codes or you don't and you state that in the license agreement. If you state that you will be able to recover the codes for the customer then you do not retort with statement such as the one you just made. The customer is always right in good business and there is a lot of methodology behind that statement besides how it reads on the surface. It means that it is up to your company to be updated enough to meet the simple demands of the loyal customer, especially if you are willing to do that in the first place. I also wish to mention that I own other softwares from other companies who do not have trouble understanding this concept nor delivering on it without hesitation or complaint. It is a little outdated to not be able to have a customer recover his rightful serial. There is a fast recovery option with nearly every other software I own.
Just remember one thing: USB-eLicenser are not affected by such problem, and restoring takes just a few clicks once the OS is restored: install from the latest updates (synths + eLCC), plug the dongle, et voilà! If you take care of the USB-eLicenser, it is highly reliable and will always do the job.
I am aware of this, but I find this a novice method of securing information such as a simple serial key. As I stated before, it is not a big deal with most software manufactures when pertaining to recovering a serial (a key to a purchased product). I wonder why other companies do not use these primitive devices? Have you stopped to consider this?
So just put the initial anger aside a few seconds, forget the "shame" and "punishment" perspective, and consider that you are part of the users who won't have to purchase an extra hard-dongle to secure their licenses.
Sir, you are misquoting me. I said nothing about "shame". That does not EVEN figure into this equation. Yes, it seems a punishment when new customers will be free to use their product without the dongle VS "native" (faithful -or- loyal) customer will be slave to it because the company is unable to come up with a fair and modern arrangement otherwise to satiate the entire customer base.
I have literally hundreds of past, present and future users at the Tech Support desk who have their hard drive crashed, or any similar OS problem, and just cannot use their synth until we jump to their rescue.
I find that the fact that you feel the need to point this out displays a certain outdated attitude compared to what other companies are able to deliver on without so much as the slightest hesitation, as it pertains to a *customer* being able to retrieve the key to their rightfully owned product (license). As stated a couple times before, It is not a big deal in this industry
in the present day.
And now, for the argument I often hear: my "laptop only has 2 USB slots"... well, and all apologies if my words are straightforward, but you should really consider using other than such poorly equipped unit. I won't use the pedantic hammer argument "serious musicians use serious gear, except for experimentation purpose", of course because I know one never chooses exactly what one *wants*, but in most cases only what one *can afford*. But nowadays absolutely everything is USB, from mouse and keyboards to cameras and even wine, so 2 slots are simply heresy if you want to seriously use a computer for music production. Or consider using a USB hub with its own power supply (avoid self-powered ones like plague).
Well, that part of your post is not relevant to what my needs consist of. If we must open this part up for discussion, as if it is the company's business what equipment I own in order to provide fair service, I'll go there a little bit. You see I am quite satisfied with a limited setup. I do absolutely everything from my customised quiet production/performance laptop/workstation, which features 4 USB 2.0 ports, as a matter of fact, all of which are taken
happily without the need for a hub by such trivial devices as the MIDI controller (at times I use 2 conroller devices), the audio interface, optical mouse and a fair-sized external peripheral storage device where I keep...
a copy of important things such as serials, texts, presets, libraries, etc. I have a perfect image of one o the partitions on my internal HDD on this ext. unit I describe, along with my project files and necessary sound/preset/dump libraries.
This is my safeguard against the miscellaneous tragedies that can occur with HDD failure and to this day I've not had a problem to use one drive or the other to backup and recover crucial data/docs.
Thank you for your time Antoine. Of course I realise that you probably have very little to do with what we are discussing other than these recovery calls you receive. I apologise if it seems I have vented on you. It is not meant to be personal.
Last, an official statement certainly is needed. I will ask our Technical Manager to intervene and post something more polished than my square words.
Yes, I am in full agreement. I spoke briefly with former Arturia customer who did away with their collection due to this very issue. That is a sad thing to hear that that had to end that way. Arturia has a good product line. I am sure that those who make the decisions will come around to delivering good customer service to those of us who have devoted so much support of the product.
Kind Regards
