Software to share software licences (legally!)

[Hellraiser97]

Ok, maybe one of you can help me out. I am trying to find out how UT used to do something in the UGL computer lab because I think it would benefit my company.

When I was at UT, UGL computer lab has just opened and they had a cool setup. Every computer there could could run programs like Photoshop, PageMaker, Quark Xpress, and I think MS Access. However, the center only had something like 10 licenses for each. So, they somehow had it set up so that while every computer could run each program, only 10 computers could have the program open at a time. If you tried to open it and a license was not available, you would be put in a queue and when one came available, it would pop up on your screen.

Anyone have any idea how they did that? Was it some self designed program, something inherent to the programs themselves, or a seperate software program designed to do it?

At my firm, we have a few pieces of software that we all use on occassion, but not all the time. The firm will only purchase one license for our whole group, so we have it installed on a central PC. It's a pain in the butt though to use it. Besides having to get up and go over there, most of us don't have our email set up on that machine or have access to some of the other programs we cross reference.

So obviously, a solution like they had at the UGL would work great for us. Ive poked around looking for a program, but so far I have come up empty.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

 

[blacklab]

Instead of that program, why not use vnc? You can be at your
computer but use the other one. A window will pop open on your
computer and you can see the entire desktop of the other computer.

www.realvnc.com/

 

[idigTexas]

Back in the day, server/client versions of apps were very common. This hasn't been the case for years, at least on the PC side. This is mostly due to the system overhead caused by running an OS with a fancy GUI, and all the glitz that apps now have that they didn’t have before. Most sever/client apps that are currently available are very specialized. Rumor has it that MS is reintroducing a server/client version of Office sometime soon, but I haven't heard much about other apps.

A lot of Mac apps still function this way, but it chokes the host system pretty severely.

In short, the applications themselves used to provide this capability. There’s no wonder tool that I know of to achieve this with standard version of software. You can use a remote access utility such as VNC, as suggested above, but the performance is usually horrible. I don’t think there is currently a viable option to run standard apps the way you’d like. Maybe someone else knows something I don’t.

 

[Hellraiser97]

Thanks guys. I may have found a way to get it to work myself (had to dust off that old VB book!).

The idea of controlling another computer is ok, but there are a couple of problems with it. First, I have more than one application I'd like to do this with, and two, I've found that since not all our PC's use the same resolution, it often makes it a pain in the ***, and slow.

 

[wherzwaldo]

I don't see why different resolutions are a problem. My laptop runs at 1400x1050 and I always connect to my 1280x1024 desktop without any problems/slowdowns.

 

[Hellraiser97]

Yeah, but try going the other direction, you then have to scroll around a bunch to see the whole screen.