Originally Posted by: musicman691 
Steinberg's upcoming system will be a disaster. Already living through that type of system with BFD 3 drum program. You have to stay logged in to their license manager even when offline. And you're computer has tp log in to their site every few months to re-up one's licenses. Trouble is right now that time period is fluid and everyone gets a different amount of time between renewals. My daw isn't connected to the net unless it really has to for updates and downloads.
Cloud is a pain because what do you do when (not if but when) you lose your internet connection? You're stuck and if you're in the middle of a session you look stupid to anyone else in the room. I love having a hardware iLok and will be happy to get down to just the one.
There is no solution which will suit everyone needs and I agree on both above counts. Just built new PC, de-bloated Win10 from useless rubbish and it will stay off-line, just as my previous Win7 did, for the past 2 yrs. I usually download stuff over the Linux (the only OS I use for the net) and move over, using external SSD (there are some rare exception and VLS, which I'm looking to buy will be in that basket). Internet outages happen. I only have dedicated desktop PC and for that reason, physical dongle doesn't bother me even, if I'd have to use a hub, but can run extra USB ports off the motherboard header, if needed.
V