One license... two computers - usage inquiry

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PioTrek
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One license... two computers - usage inquiry

Postby PioTrek » 01 Dec 2009

Hi.

Recently purchased Multicharts after a very pleasurable experience using the 30-day 5.5 Trial. Product has come a long way since my last demo of 2.x/3.x series.

Need some clearing up.

I run two workstations. WStation#1 for live trading/live feeds and WStation#2 for offline modeling/prototyping/optimizations with ASCII data. Also moonlights as general backup in case WStation#1 goes down. Both connect to internet via same IP(router).

I have purchased one MC Gold lifetime license.

Will I be able to accomplish the following:

WStation#1 - Use two instances of online MC 5.5 as "live/real time" platform for charting and possibly automation with IB. Datafeeds: IQFeed/IB

WStation#2 - Simultaneously use one instance of MC 5.5 in "offline" mode during trade hours to work with ASCII data (run optimizations/backtest/walk forward etc). And in case of catastrophic failure on WStation #1, activate realtime instance of MC 5.5 and corresponding datafeeds on WStation#2.

My understanding upon purchase of the license/info on website is that one can only use live/realtime MC on one computer at a time, with forum posts insinuating an offline mode instance of MC on a 2nd computer is aok.

Thank you!

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TomKeough
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One license... two computers - usage inquiry

Postby TomKeough » 30 Jan 2010

PioTrek,
Did you ever get an answer from support on this?
Regards,
Tom

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arnie
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Postby arnie » 30 Jan 2010

Andrew answered this a couple of weeks ago in a very detailed manner.

Try to search in the forum.

As far as I remember, you can only have 1 MC online and only in 1 PC.
You can have a second MC opened in another PC in offline mode, though you need to go online with that version one per month (or week?, sorry, can't remember) so you can continue to work with it.

If you want to have 2 MC's online at the same time you need to buy a second license.

bowlesj3
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Postby bowlesj3 » 30 Jan 2010

You can have a second MC opened in another PC in offline mode
Actually with one license you are suppose to have only one MC running at a time period unless they have changed the policy since MC 2.1.999.999 which I have not heard of. I don't think they have. Maybe you can get away with having a second one run offline at the moment but I think that will eventually be blocked as well so that users are forced to follow the policy properly.

The policy states that you can run one copy of MC live or offline at a time. If you want to run two at a time (live+live or live+offline or offline+offline) you need a two copy license.

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arnie
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Postby arnie » 30 Jan 2010

I would swear that Andrew said that we could use one in offline at the same time one is online (same license), though the offline one would need to connect at least once per month or week to continue active.

Was this a dream?

:?


Anyway, I rarely connect to two at the same time since my brain can only do one thing at a time, trade or research. Doing both at the same time is half way to disaster :roll:

bowlesj3
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Postby bowlesj3 » 30 Jan 2010

Here is the first response from Andrew. It involves using MC on one computer and the editor on another computer.

http://forum.tssupport.com/viewtopic.ph ... ce+license

There is another resposne from TJ that states what I stated if I can find it.

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Bruce DeVault
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Postby Bruce DeVault » 01 Feb 2010

Whatever their informal policy may be and whether or not it is or isn't enforced by whatever DRM rules are in place today or that they may have had in the past, while I don't speak for TS Support, I would humbly suggest for my own part that if you intend to use MultiCharts on two computers at the same time, you should simply buy two licenses. It's a straight forward matter of "doing the right thing" - if you're using two copies at the same time, you're using two copies at the same time, and you should pay for those two copies, and support a software vendor that is working hard to do major new development and bring you new features, including a new MultiCharts 6.0 upgrade.

bowlesj3
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Postby bowlesj3 » 01 Feb 2010

I personally have never had a use for two at a time. I don't backtest. Occasionally I will forget an EL code transfer to/from the offsite machine but taking MC down and up (to do an export from the other machine) is so fast this is not a big deal to do that. The GVs stay in memory so it does not impact this either if the programs that use the GVs are gone for a while. Now adays I don't do much EL programming work either so the need to do this is very rare.


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