no portable license with Maya?

[theKwyjibo]

I don't know about the fee but Maya is locked to either the MAC address (physical address) of the machine's NIC card or a Dongle (hardware lock) which lists for $150 that is bought at the time of the software. You can get the dongle and licence it to that and you should be fine (unless you get a system without a standard parallel port, as the PCI parallel ports do not work with the sentinel driver that runs the dongle)

-Russ

[theKwyjibo]

Oh,

A trick that might work is setting up your PC with a PCMCIA (pc card)reader and getting a LAN PC-card. This way you can swap between the laptop and pc by moving the LAN card. Don't know for sure if it would work but there is no reason it would not so long as you use its address for the license (remember this is the physical address not the IP address, under win2k/nt you can find this with the command ipconfig /all . it will look something like this - 00-B0-D0-61-52-AB ). Been thinking about doing this myself. I hope you are wrong about the fee however.

-Russ

[Ibanezhead]

You just need a Network Card, and they will base your license on that...

[JasonA]

hmmm thats very interesting (and a bit distressing). The local reseller I've been talking to has used this as a point for upgrading max (for whatever reason he really wants to sell me max over maya).

Anyways, I hope that they offer the dongle, but I didn't see anything about it on the A|W website. While its not always the most stable, max uses a software lock which can be exported/imported pretty easily so you can work with your version of max at work, then take the license home, take it back to work again.. (obviously only 1 instance of max works at a time)

Using the network card sucks if you want to use Maya somewhere else, or worse yet, what happens when you network card fails? I assume this is where a processesing fee would kick in, am I right? Russ your idea is interesting, might get some portability that way.

[beaker]

I don't believe you can get a dongle anymore with maya for node locked licenses, they stoped using them around 2.5/3.0(2-3 years ago). There are floating licenses that use dongles, but a/w only allows floating lics with maya unlimited, not complete.

Resellers make dick on maya now that it is only 2k. They will probably make more commision on 3dsmax. I always take what resellers say with a grain of salt. I dislike them very much because they are almost always like car salesmen. They are a necessary evil and you pay them to get the equipment you need from one source with a small markup, not to listen to their opinions. The small markup is for the convienience of having one person to call up and say, I need this, and they get it for you and not deal with the BS of purchasing from different companies and juggling PO's. 99% of the time they don't know dick about what they are selling you and they are usually looking into selling you what will make them the most commision not what is in your best interests.

Just my experience from many years of being in charge of purchasing equipment from resellers. Glad I don't have to deal with that crap anymore.

[uncle_frankie]

We have hundreds of them!

[theKwyjibo]

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I don't believe you can get a dongle anymore with maya for node locked licenses, they stoped using them around 2.5/3.0(2-3 years ago). There are floating licenses that use dongles, but a/w only allows floating lics with maya unlimited, not complete.
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This is not correct.
You can still get dongles, however you have to pay for them. When I purchased unlimited I got quotes for both and both would support a dongle which listed for $150. I ended up getting node-locked Unlimited with a dongle althoigh I ended up authorising it to the NIC(network) card as I was having problems with the sentenal driver. I still have the dongle and in all liklihood could re-authorise it to it if I could get a system that supported it correctly.
Also floating license maya is different from node locked in that the licenses are served from a central license server that stores the licenses internally. When a workstation attempts to initiate a session it gets a license from the server. This way if you have a lot of workstations and/or users that move around, and Maya is not in heavy use you can just get a few licenses and serve them around without people having to carry dongles and the like around.

-Russ

[beaker]

Sorry, I wasn't very clear in my explanation before. A/w stopped shipping out dongles with maya around 2.5/3.0 and started by default keying them to the mac address, but yes, you could still get a dongle. As of the new pricing structure since february a/w has changed it so you can only get floating lics with unlimited and all complete lics are node locked. Floating lics on windows are usually keyed to a dongle so your not stuck with one machine as the floating server.

Maybe I am still incorrect with this, but I believe that with the new pricing structure you can only get a dongle with unlimited/floating lic. I could still be wrong about this, but that is how I interpreted it from the a/w rep I talked too.

[theKwyjibo]

For the most part this is the way I was hearing it with complete being around parity with other apps that are node locked ($2000 us) there really is little incentive for Alias to also give the advantages of floating licenses.
The salesperson I worked with seemed positive that it could be licensed to Complete, however there is always the possibility that he was wrong. I would not have been happy paying an extra $150 for a dongle that would have been useless had I purchased Comlete instead of Unlimited.

-Russ

[JasonA]

thanks guys,

Appreciate all of the responses. Russ, looks like you're right.

I phoned a rep today, and here's what he told me. Evidently, there is only the node locked license to Maya complete, however if I opt for it, I can get a hardware dongle. Basically the default deal is its locked to the mac addy. If I want the dongle, I pay an extra $150. If the dongle ever fails, I gotta pay another $150 for a new one, or to switch it over the the network card. Similairly with the network card; if I change it or it fails, I gotta pay another $150.

Russ, what kind of problems did you have with the Sentinal driver?

Man they leave plenty of ways to get another $150 dollars out of me!! :thumbsdow

[beaker]

Thanks for the info, very cool. I guess I did interpret what was told to me wrong.

I would think that the mac would have less issues because they would have to be using a usb dongle. Alot of past issues were because of the lame parallel port ones. Especially when you have more than one they conflict on the parallel port. Like back when max first came out we had 3dsmax, Autocad, FormZ and one other dongle. They would have to be in a specific order otherwise certain apps wouldn't see it.

[theKwyjibo]

The problem with the driver is that it requires a legacy parallel port. If you are using a PCI port it will not function at all. Apparently it has something to do with the resources (IRQ and DMA etc) being used to communicate with the dongle. And there is no work around that I could find anywhere on their site. I have one of the newer systems that has no parallel port (or serial ports for that matter). Looking at the documentation when you have more than 1 network card you get a pulldown menu on the hardware address' of the different cards so you can select which card it is licensed to, the trick I was talking of might just work.

-Russ

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