tricky licensing issue - please help! (case 15128)

[mariegood]

Hi there,

I have just started a faculty position at a very small university. I did my post-doc at a large, well-funded lab, where I learned to use medialab and directRT. I love the programs, and I really want to continue using them for my research and my honours students' thesis projects. I had planned to purchase licenses to run both programs on 5 computers, but I have run into a problem. The only lab here that has individual computers on which software can be loaded, has only Macs, which, I just discovered, aren't compatible with medialab and directRT. There are only 2 PC labs here, where the computers are are all connected to an internal server (i.e., none of the computers in the labs have individual towers where software could be loaded individually - they are just monitors hooked up to a central server). A site license isn't financially possible. Would it be possible for me to purchase something that would enable me to have the programs run on only 5 computers in the lab (through an internal server)? I have no idea what the technical issues might be with this, but I wanted to check to see if it was even possible before I talk to IT about this. Any thoughts?
Thanks so much,

Marie

[JEC]

Hi there,

I have just started a faculty position at a very small university. I did my post-doc at a large, well-funded lab, where I learned to use medialab and directRT. I love the programs, and I really want to continue using them for my research and my honours students' thesis projects. I had planned to purchase licenses to run both programs on 5 computers, but I have run into a problem. The only lab here that has individual computers on which software can be loaded, has only Macs, which, I just discovered, aren't compatible with medialab and directRT. There are only 2 PC labs here, where the computers are are all connected to an internal server (i.e., none of the computers in the labs have individual towers where software could be loaded individually - they are just monitors hooked up to a central server). A site license isn't financially possible. Would it be possible for me to purchase something that would enable me to have the programs run on only 5 computers in the lab (through an internal server)? I have no idea what the technical issues might be with this, but I wanted to check to see if it was even possible before I talk to IT about this. Any thoughts?
Thanks so much,

Marie

We replied via email on this one.

For reference, both MediaLab and DirectRT will work nicely on Macs which have BootCamp and then Windows installed.

MediaLab will also work in a virtual Windows machine (Parallels, etc) on a Mac. DirectRT, however, requires native access to the PC's graphics system to ensure accurate reaction times. For that reason, it won't work in a virtual environment.

Finally, MediaLab should behave nicely on the virtual server which you've described.

John