Cardbox at work and at home

Two computers, one licence?

"I have a computer at work and one at home. When I take some work home, I want to be able to use Cardbox there. Your licence says Cardbox can only be installed on one computer. But I'm the only person who uses Cardbox, so I don't see why I should get two licences".

If this is the situation then we don't demand that you buy two copies of Cardbox because it wouldn't be reasonable. The key question is this: when you're using one computer, could someone else be using Cardbox on the other one?

Can a colleague use your Cardbox at work while you're using Cardbox at home?
Can your family use your Cardbox at home while you're using Cardbox at work?

If the answer is "Yes" or "Perhaps", then we're talking about two separate Cardbox installations and you need to buy two separate copies of Cardbox, one for each place.
If the anwer is "No, Cardbox will only ever be used in one place at a time", then we're effectively talking about a single Cardbox installation that follows you around, and the fact that the software is physically stored on two different computers is just a convenience. In this case, we're happy for you to install Cardbox on both computers.

Dialling in to the office

Suppose you have a computer at work (not connected to a network) and a computer at home, and you've got Cardbox installed on both, obeying the licence restrictions we've just described. You're one of those people who dial in to your work computer when you're at home. How do you use Cardbox?

Home computer as a "dumb terminal"

Remote-access software such as PCAnywhere lets you turn your home computer into a keyboard-and-screen for your office computer: everything you type on your keyboard gets typed into the office computer's keyboard and everything the office computer displays on its screen gets displayed on your screen.

This is extremely simple to set up.
You are using Cardbox on your office computer, so everything is familiar.
It can be very irritating over long periods. Unless you have a very fast link to the office, the screen will behave sluggishly and there'll be a noticeable time lag between doing something (especially with the mouse) and seeing the result.

Office computer as a network disk

Your remote-access software will probably give you an option to view your entire office computer as if it were just an extra hard disk drive on your home computer (to save explanations, let's call it drive O:).

This is simple to set up.
When you want to open a database on your office computer, locate the file in drive O: and tell Cardbox to open it from there.
The screen response will be very fast because Cardbox is running on your home computer.
Searches may be slow because all the disk access has to take place over a telephone line to the office.

A Cardbox server on your office computer

This is a little harder to set up and costs a little more, but it gives by far the best performance. You don't need remote-access software at all.

Buy the Cardbox Server and set it up on your office computer. You don't need to buy any user licences for the Server because your own copy of Cardbox already has a licence.
When you want to open a database on your office computer, open Cardbox, tell it to connect to the Cardbox Server in your office, and open the database from there.
The screen response will be very fast.
Searches will be fast because the Cardbox Server is running on your office computer, directly connected to the hard disk where the database is.

Security

If you use the Cardbox Network Server, all your communications are encrypted using SSL. Even if someone intercepted your Internet connection, they wouldn't be able to see what you were doing with Cardbox.

If you use one of the other approaches, you are dependent on whatever encryption your remote access software might be providing. This may be secure or it may not be secure: we don't know.