Can you elaborate on the activation options that are available and the pros and cons of each?

 

ENERCALC’s License Agreement for Structural Engineering Library is an attempt to be very flexible for those who can take advantage of it.  We don’t restrict installations.  Instead, we control activations.  By working it that way, we are able to tell users that they are free to install the software on as many machines as they wish, and we use one of a few different methods of ensuring that the maximum number of permissible simultaneous activations is not exceeded.

 

The most flexible method of doing that (for users who can) is through the use of our Internet Activation system.  For users who can configure their communications to take advantage of this system, it offers the advantage of being able to share a relatively few number of seats among many users.

 

For those who have many users but who cannot configure their network communications to permit the use of the Internet Activation system, we offer the Network License Manager.  This is a separate piece of software that gets installed somewhere on your LAN, and it becomes a usage limiter that ensures that you don’t exceed the maximum number of permissible simultaneous activations as dictated by your license agreement.  The advantages of this method are that it still allows you to economize by maintaining a relatively few seats to serve many users, and it can be manually activated to completely circumvent the need for Internet communication.  The downside to this method is that it does not permit a user to indefinitely activate a computer such as a laptop and them remove it from your LAN and remain activated.

 

The third activation option comes into play for those users who cannot configure their networks to permit Internet Activation and also cannot configure their networks to permit the local communication between workstations and server as required by the NLM.  We refer to this option as Manual Activation, and it is the least flexible, because the activations are locked to particular computers.  These activations do not have the ability to be shared between computers, but they are guaranteed to work.

 

So as you can see, we offer a spectrum of options, and you gain flexibility each time you can move closer to the top of this list of options.  As your network limits you, you are forced closer to the bottom of this list, which also tends to have the effect of reducing your flexibility if you hold the number of seats constant.  Or, looked at another way, as you move down in the list of activation options, it requires the maintenance of more seats in order to achieve the same flexibility that can be achieved with fewer seats when the other activation methods can be used.