Dongle

Barring a breach of contract on the part of the local ArcGIS distributor, I should be able to start work tomorrow! Yes, start. Well, I have uploaded the waypoints to the computer at the office, navigated the maze of user accounts and executed the necessary software updates, but as of today I haven’t been able to open the geography software that will facilitate our final product. Due to the cost of ESRI products (~$1500 for the most basic GIS kit), the manufacturer requires a rather intensive registration process to activate the program. Sometime in the last two years the software was uninstalled from the Yanapuma computers, so I reinstalled it yesterday afternoon. The first time I opened it, an error message declared I was missing a Sentinal SuperPro driver. Installed the necessary driver, I was informed that I was now missing the Single Use Hardware Key, also known as a 'dongle'. This dongle is a USB drive that ensures the software can’t be used on multiple computers at once. By what I would say is a design flaw, it looks just like a common flash memory stick so sometime in the period of time when no one was using the software at Yanapuma, the key walked off. By 9:30 this morning I had determined that the missing key was our problem, after starting installation about noon yesterday. The interim I was talking on the phone, chatting and emailing customer service reps in the US and Ecuador. Because the NGO is located in Ecuador, US reps claimed they couldn’t help and I would have to contact the Ecuadorian distributor. Since ArcGIS was donated to Yanapuma from the US, the Ecuadorian distributor said they couldn’t offer assistance. When I visited the distributors office they informed me that I would have to pay the annual maintenance fee before I could purchase the hardware key, for $600. The head of the Conservation Grant program at ESRI that originally donated the software said I could apply for funding to cover the maintenance cost and since I couldn’t buy the key, writing a grant presented itself as the only option. I sent a desperate email to our assigned customer service rep at ESRI hoping for some exemption from the maintenance fee. A few hours of grant forms later I get an email from the distributor saying they’d sell me the key. The rep had sent this email: “Would you be kind enough to assist the customer below with purchasing an hardware key? They seemed to have lost theirs.” With such a mandate from the headquarters, the distributor couldn’t turn me down.