Edge dongle problems

[Andy Gorman]

All I can say is: what a bunch of robbing bastards!

This subject has arisen before. If they absolutely won’t give you a better deal on a replacement dongle, I’d buy from a supplier with better customer service, and a software package that doesn’t use a dongle.

Again, robbing bastards !

[Paul Cox]

SHOCKING!! No worse than that, DISGUSTING!!

Surely they should have the provision to supply replacement Dongles especially when you shell out huge amounts for there products and packages.

Mind you, i would ring back and speak to someone different as i have found that i have got several different answers from several different people on the same subject when dealing with Spandex. And now, i dont even use them, cost me time and money on too many occasions!!!!

I know if you were a Signlab customer, you are looking at around £75.00 for a replacement dongle but that was when i thought i’d lost mine carrying it back and for home.

On the other hand, if you have had your Software for four years now maybe you may want to upgrade anyway to benefit from the newer and improved features, especially to get the best from Edge.

🙂

[Phill Fenton]

I agree with Andy – time to switch software.

We buy software in good faith – when it fails it should be possible to restore it from a backup. The use of dongles to “cripple” software should be challenged as I believe it is probably illegal.

For all we know – dongles could be programmed to “fail” after a period of time.

The “millenium bug” is a laughable example of how many companies were duped into buying upgrades on software that was deliberately programmed to “fail” when in fact there was no legitimate reason why this should be (Sage instant accounting is one example I know of – no doubt there were many more).

Our own labour government were complicit in this huge scam as they were badly advised on this issue (as they appear to have been on many others 🙄 – The gulf war being a classic example of their ineptitude)).

[Marekdlux]

I would contact GSP directly about the dongle. What kind of problems are you having with it? The software is useless without the dongle so I don’t see why they would have a problem of switching them out for you. Again, I would contact GSP directly and cut out the middle-man.
-Marek

[Lynn Normington]

So I guess you won’t be voting labour tommorow :lol1:

Lynn

[Robert Lambie]

this happened to me in the past with signlab, wasn’t so much cadlink, but the sales rep for them in Scotland. we have bought 5 signlabs over the years and lost a dongle moving units. called my rep and he told me because i had so many signlabs, he would do it for £1400? 😮 after much kick up i contacted them direct, “i think” i could buy a new one for £200 or replace the old one “if i returned” for £50 it was a while ago those figures could have been higher. 😕 after arguing i have 5 registered license’s the lady said, if you lost your car, would the car company give you a new one because you have registered it under your name? my reply was, i ha vent lost my car, just the key? 😉
anyway… i can see “why” software companies do this, just protecting themselves from scams and the like. stands to reason i guess with all the crap they get with piracy etc. but… i do think they should be a bit more sympathetic to existing customers.

however, having the original that you can return, and “is” faulty… but still they will not replace is verging on a joke!
if you have the dongle etc and can return it to them, ask them if you do this can you have a replacement? obviously them may say there is a fee of some sort and postage etc which is understandable. then fair do’s sometimes it happens, however, if you are told you will have to buy a complete new package. let me know at admin@uksignboards.com 😉

[Martin Armitage]

We had the very same problem last year, the dongle wouldnt work so we couldnt use omega. We sent the dongle to be repaired by Spandex, who couldnt repair it and they ordered a new one for us, which was shipped in from America. It took between two to three weeks to get back to us and after much fighting managed to get a loan dongle out of them (tech support told us that they had no spares and were extremely unhelpful, a telephone shrug of the shoulders was the attitude we got, I got onto the materials sales manager and she got one organised for us within the hour)
If you dont have a service contract the charge per day was extremely high.
Are you using the serial or usb dongle if you are using the serial dongle there should be a usb upgrade that would have come with the original edge.
At the time we just couldnt believe that the company that supplied us with our equipment and software couldnt offer us a replacement dongle off the shelf, I asked why that was the case and got no reasonable answer out of them. I guess that things havnt changed!

[Simon Forrester]

We had problems with our dongle last year, spandex were next to no help!

Anyway the solution was to install the latest dongle driver which can be found here http://www.safenet-inc.com/support/tech/sentinel.asp

The reason for our troubles was a windows update. have you done an update or installed any new software recently?

Simon

[Richard Urquhart]

this may sound simple but what they should do is only replace the dongle after they get the faulty one back ,would this not work?

[Robert Lambie]

yes, you would think so rich, even with a small charge for having to sort out the new dongle and shipping. this is understandable… but to say your on your own unless you cough up is a joke!

[RayW]

Just to clarify the position with cadlink and Signlab, a replacement dongle (where the original is returned to us) will cost £75.00.
Where a dongle is lost or stolen you will have to purchase a replacement package, which we charge as a second site licence at cost -40%. This discount grows to 50% depending on the number of copies you have.
Any of our dealers can deal with these issues.
The reason for having the dongle is so we stay in business, with no dongle the software would be shared around with no revenue for us, and that would mean no more development or support for you guys. (hot)

[Stephen Benson]

What version of Omega are you running? If it’s 1.5x the dongles are LPT / Serial port. That could be the problem. Maybe they’re not making them any more! Omega 2.x are all USB. That price you were quoted is most likely for a new seat which is not what you need. What you’ll probably require is an upgrade, about £285 GB Pounds by my reckoning.

[Dave Springate]

mm……. (:) Spandex, what a great company with excellent customer service…………NOT!

Dave (another not so happy customer)

[Chris Dowd]

Thanks for all your comments on this.

I do have both dongles, the USB and the other one, however, the USB dongle got damaged a while back when we upgraded to Omega 1.56.

Apparently, this requires you to update the Sentinel driver, and unless you remove the dongle before you upgrade the software, the dongle can suffer damage (something that is not highlighted until you read the readme file).

The funny thing is that the other dongle would work if you put a fan heater behind it to warm it up (yeah, sounds a bit far-fetched I know, but true), however, this PC had Windows ME on it, and picked up a virus last weekend (despite all the anti-virus we have), and the PC was unrecoverable.

I have re-loaded Omega 1.56 and kept the original Sentinel drivers, tried the old fan heater trick, and still no luck, so I think the dongle is well and truly broken.

What I didn’t point out in my original post is that this is our second dongle, and now having to get a 3rd will almost be the equivalent of 1 per year.

The last replacement was charged at something like £200, which I was / am prepared to pay this time (I did moan like crazy last time, as we had a service agreement and I believed that the dongle should have been replaced free under that, however, good old Spandex refused as it was a software issue and I was only covered for hardware!).

Anyway, another day has almost passed, and despite Spandex Sales emailing Technical asking them to call me last night, surprise sup rise no returned phone call – shocking service.

I’ll let you know how I get on!

[Martin Armitage]

I am pretty certain that to upgrade your dongle to usb requires that the serial dongle is disabled (permanently) first wich is probably why your serial dongle doesnt work. When we upgraded to edge 2 according to the engineer our serial dongle had been configured wrong and shouldn’t have worked on our system (worked perfectly though) so he configured it right and then couldnt get the thing to work, hence we went to usb upgrade.
We also had problems with another version of windows witch wouldn’t let us configure the dongle and had to roll back to windows 98 to get it too work.

[Stephen Benson]

Replacement keys are available from Gerber distributors in the US. They are $350.00 USD (approx). The part number(s) are:

Red block – (Ga Select / omega CL) P74861A
Teal – (GA Elite / Omega CS) P74859A
Blue (GA Premier / Omega CP) P74858A
USB (Omega all levels) P74860A

Replacement keys for defective keys are $350.00 US.