Combining hardware and software to solve the dongle problem

The PRO-Tector Flash™ solution solves the problems associated with traditional dongles while leaving the benefits intact.

Lowering the cost of entry

Now, with the introduction of low-cost USB drives and the ability to quickly create your own physical protection without help from a third party dongle provider, developers can minimise the cost of software protection while maximizing control over their intellectual property.

With dongle-based copy protection costing around $30 per unit, Nalpeiron can cut the up-front cost of volume production units by a third. Back-end costs associated with issues like support, inventory management and distribution will also be dramatically reduced.

Lowering the cost of support

Because they use standard memory chips instead of the specialist ASICs used by dongles, USB-based flash drives are much less likely to cause problems with operating system software or system patches because they do not use specialist drivers. And because it is so easy to copy the license to a PC, it will reduce the replacement costs associated with many dongle-based copy protection systems.

Similarly, standard solid state RAM has a better mean time between failure (MTBF), offering up to a million hours and reducing support costs still further.

Lowering the cost of distribution

Because dongles can be created on the fly using off-the-shelf USB flash drives, developers can buy USB flash drives from a variety of different sources, increasing the flexibility of supply. This enables them to fulfil their software shipments, according to their own schedule rather than waiting for a specialist dongle vendor to provide them with product.

Unlike traditional dongles, which preclude the user from using software that has been downloaded from the Internet, PROTector Flash™ enables customers to use a trial version of the software, ordering a separate USB flash drive which can be plugged into their machine upon arrival, creating a license and converting the product into a full-use version.

And whereas other dongles can hold 115 software licenses, the high capacity of many USB flash drives enables a flash drive enabled with our software to hold 250 licenses, with up to twice the application memory (10Kb).

For more useful information, See "The customer proposition"