Softimage XSI floating license LAST. USB Ethernet adapter

[Nolan]

Remember the days of the hardware dongle? You could move to a different PC, freelance at a clients, use your software forever even when your subscription stopped because you could install without a new key for your new motherboard.

If you license your software to a MAC address ,using a floating license, on an Ethernet USB adapter or PCI-E card your software can outlive your current hardware.

Buy something like the Plugable USB 2.0 to 10/100/1000 Gigabit Ethernet LAN Network Adapter USB2-E1000 http://plugable.com/products/usb2-e1000/ or a PCI-E Ethernet card,

If using windows make sure you get one that has modern Windows Vista or higher 64bit drivers. The driver model was updated for Vista so it should stay the same for a while. There are a few manufacturers of these devices but they seem to often have problems supplying 64bit drivers, the one mentioned above says it supplies Win 7 64bit ones. They seem to mainly use chipsets from one manufacturer so you may be able to use drivers for that chipset. This one http://plugable.com/products/usb2-e1000/ uses the ASIX AX88178 Chipset so I assume that these drivers from the chip manufacturer should continuously be updated to new OS's and platforms and always available but that is untested for other brands although others have made encouraging remarks. Mac OS X and Linux drivers are there as well.

Try googling for your product name and likely ASIX chipset and count the number of results vs other chipsets to find out what chipset is in your product. But note that they can be modified electronically and so the standard drivers from the chipset manufacturer isn’t guaranteed to work and so that hardware could be end of lined as opposed to one that uses the chipset manufacturers driver. My one uses a non standard driver for instance.

Licensing to one of these should provide portability, overcome getting a new key file from your software supplier when installing on a new machine, if you let your license lapse, etc. Check that your license allows that though and that the right to use doesn’t expire. Also your license may not allow you to move locations. READ YOUR LICENSE EULA

License to a usb ethernet adapter dongle or PCI-E card!

http://www.amazon.com/Plugable-Gigabit- ... B003VSTDFG The manufacturers driver page for this product points to the chipset manufacturers driver page so I must assume it has a standard electronic layout and so will not be end of lined and will have OS and platform compatibility in future.

When it has installed. Find the driver in the Device Manager and C:\Windows\System32 and save a copy with your Softimage product download.

[I wrote this a while ago and for the general CG artist on cgtalk and have edited it and reposted it here. The recommended hardware may have changed and is noted above at amazon but note the caution above re choosing one which uses the chipset manufacturers standard driver remains.]

As for node locked:-
luceric
Yes, you can use your older permanent license of Softimage forever and Autodesk will help you move it if it's node-locked and your machine dies. The FAQ will be updated soon with info on this. stay tuned

[rray]

If a network card breaks, you can also set the MAC address of a new one manually to the old one. Most adapters support that. Would recommend applying for a new license in that case though to be safe.

[IslandDreamer]

I spoofed a MAC address at some point for an obsolete software product. It was a pain, but it worked.

[dewf]

That's a lot of trouble. Just use a keygen after 2016.

[Pooby]

In my opinion (only) if you have bought a license, and you have changed a machine, and the company who you licensed it from won't let you swap it, then it doesn't alter the fact you have license to use that product on one machine.
I think they would have a hard time prosecuting you if you had to use your software you legally bought a permanent license for by any means possible. After all, who would be in the wrong?
I'm certainly not advocating piracy, but I wouldn't see that as piracy.

However, I believe this situation will not arise with Softimage as was under the impression they will reissue licenses in the event of failed hardware into the future even past 2016. Please correct me if I'm wrong.

Moderator edit: @all Let's not discuss piracy. We all know of it, we just cannot discuss it here! ;) - HB