Personally, I don't have a problem with dongles. In fact, I like them in some cases because they allow me to easily and legally move my license key between machines when necessary. Avid was dongle-only for years, and when they went cross platform and improved their performance on laptops it made it very easy to take advantage of that, because the dongles, like the software, were cross platform. In fact, in the rather large company I currently work for, we wish they had stayed that way because quite frankly, it's a pain in the neck to re-authorize specific computers when IT security forces us to isolate our internal network, cutting off Internet access for those machines. Fortunately, we have a long standing relationship with Avid and have been able to get some dongles to circumvent that problem. But for anyone working in a large installation that must have network security (the MPAA and the studios force us to do that), dongles are a very good thing. As are license servers.
On a personal level, I like the fact that a dongle allows me to run the same software, with the same license, on a workstation and a laptop without regard for Internet connectivity on either.
