ECE uses software from a wide range of sources for research, teaching, and administrative use. License terms generally differ on which of these uses are permitted, and pricing tends to vary between these purposes. When acquiring and installing software, please be attentive to the publisher's terms of use and be sure you are covered by the appropriate license for whichever use you require.

Some titles may be licensed for teaching purposes only, and might require a separate license at additional cost for research use.

Software for research use within ECE can be obtained under licenses held by the University, the department or a professor or research group. Some products are covered by site licenses for all of ECE; some by counted network licenses managed within ECE on group servers, which allow a specified number of concurrent users to be running the application or tool at the same time; other products are licensed per user or per machine, and may be purchased by individual professors for their own systems. Some licenses permit use on personally-owned computers as well, but not always; please check license terms of each specific product regarding use on personal PCs and laptops, and use off campus.

We have two key sources for ordering software licenses within the university: the Licensed Software Office of the Information Commons, and the Campus Computer Store in the Koeffler Centre (south of the Bahen building). Both are set up to accept FIS payments. Other product licenses may have to be purchased directly from the software publisher. Many titles are licensed on a recurring basis, such as yearly – either a perpetual license for the version you acquire, then annual maintenance coverage for version upgrades; or annual usage licenses that expire unless renewed, and access to the software ceases upon license expiry.

Outside of the University system, there is a concentration of small computer retailers along College St. and Spadina Ave. Most of these are oriented more toward hardware than software. This BlogTO page provides a handy overview of area stores. EE students in particular should check out Creatron who carry Arduino, RaspberryPi, and plenty of components, cabling, and tools for electronic / robotics design projects.

Each computer running Microsoft Windows must have a valid license. The primary way to obtain a license is at the time of purchase of the system. Major PC retailers such as Dell and HP normally bundle a Windows license with every desktop and laptop PC they sell. There is a rectangular sticker affixed to the case, bearing the Microsoft logo, hologram, and a 25-character activation key. This “Certificate of Authenticity” (“COA”) is assigned to that particular PC and is not transferrable. Starting with Windows 8, Microsoft no longer supplies the COA sticker, but brand-name PCs with a bundled license will still include a smaller square badge sticker showing “Windows 8” on the case.

If you purchase a PC without a Windows license, most of the options we have for ordering licenses are not suitable, because they provide only an upgrade license; this requires an existing base license assigned to the PC. There are no base licenses available for purchase from UofT nor the Campus Computer Store, and the new MS Campus Agreement does not provide base licenses. You can purchase a base license for Windows from computer retailers.

One possible exception is the Microsoft Developer Network (MSDN) Academic Alliance. ECE faculty and current students are eligible for MSDN-AA subscriptions by visiting this ECF web page. MSDN-AA includes access to Microsoft Windows and most MS developer tools such as Visual Studio, though not all ECE PCs are eligible. See their terms of use for details. Once subscribed to MSDN-AA you'll receive a login and password by email. The support site lets you “order” (for $0) one license for a given edition of Windows; upon “checkout”, they present a download link and display your 25-letter activation key, which you should save. This key can activate only one installation of Windows. If you have to reinstall, you may need to contact MSDN. Note that licenses from MSDN-AA do not count as a base license for the Campus Agreement.

In July 2013 UofT's central administration entered into a broad licensing agreement with Microsoft called the Microsoft Campus Agreement. This agreement provides unlimited licenses at no incremental cost for any university-owned PCs for Microsoft Office, and Forefront Endpoint Protection (antivirus), and upgrade licenses for Enterprise Edition of Windows 10 or Windows 11 operating system. Use of MS Windows under the MS Campus Agreement requires a base license assigned to the PC - either from the original COA included with purchase, or a retail license purchased separately for a 'bare' PC ordered without Windows (e.g. from College St.) Details on how the MS Campus Agreement applies to ECE are here: ms_campus_agreement.

UofT faculty and staff have access to the UofT MS Campus Agreement support website. You log in with your UTORid and password. Students are not granted access, so groups who have delegated PC support to grad students may need the professor or an RA or PDF to log in to access installation media for them. The site has links with program terms and conditions, installation instructions, and links to download media images for installers for all products offered.

Software licensed under the MS Campus Agreement uses a network Key Management Server for license activation. To access this, your computer must be connected to the UofT network. Off-campus PCs that are eligible (those purchased by the university) can make use of the Key Management Service by connecting through the UofT VPN (not the ECE VPN, which is different and not suited for this purpose.) To set up the UofT VPN, go to vpn.utoronto.ca. Microsoft products activated through the KMS will continue to check for KMS access in the background, and must make contact with the KMS at least every six months. If your PC is offline or not connected to the UofT network for more than six months, the products will alert you that they cannot renew activation until the KMS is contacted. If that happens, re-connect to the UofT network (via the UofT VPN if off-campus) to let the software re-activate.

Neither MSDN-AA nor the MS Campus Agreement cover Windows licenses for personally-owned PCs or laptops. If you need a Windows license for your own computer, you need to purchase a retail license. Microsoft Office is available to current UofT faculty and staff for just $11 via the Home Use program under the MS Campus Agreement. Watch https://microsoft.utoronto.ca for details on the Home Use program.

The Campus Computer Store in UofT bookstore at the Koffler Student Centre has academic discount pricing for a variety of software for personal use on computers owned by you personally. (Inquire about availability of MS Windows upgrade licenses for personal use - terms may have changed recently.)

ECE also operates centrally managed Sun Solaris and Debian Linux servers and desktop systems. Many users on the “tier 2” or “tier 3” self-support plan install their own choice of operating system, including various distributions of Linux. Some ECE groups have licenses for a number of technical software packages implemented on Unix/Linux.

MacOS has a growing following in ECE as well. Some technical software such as Matlab have equivalent versions for macOS X; others may be available only for Windows or Unix/Linux. Check with the application vendor for specific requirements.

The Microsoft Campus Agreement provides licenses for Microsoft Office for Mac. Access the installer via the UofT MSCA page. Mac users can also use Microsoft 365 browser-based office apps through the “waffle” menu on the https://webmail.utoronto.ca UofT webmail page.

Emulation / virtualization software could allow running a Windows application within a VM on Solaris, Linux, MacOS, but there is generally some degree of performance penalty to do so; you need a license for Windows to do this, as well. The MS Campus Agreement deems MacOS to be a valid “base” license for running MS Windows on your Apple computer, whether through Boot Camp, Parallels, VMWare or VirtualBox. Access the Windows installer via the UofT MSCA page.

Microsoft Windows is subject to a very wide array of intrusions and nuisance software. It is vital to keep all Windows computers set up and updated with the latest definitions for anti-virus and anti-spyware software. Recent versions of Windows include Windows Defender built in to the O/S, and updated automatically via Microsoft Update.

UofT's Microsoft Campus Agreement includes licensing for System Center Endpoint Protection for all university-owned PCs: https://isea.utoronto.ca/policies-procedures/guidelines-2/data-protection/antivirus/

All Windows PCs should also have the following products installed:

• Antivirus software with ongoing updates. The UofT anti-virus info site has links to recommended products for Windows and Mac for Students and for Faculty & Staff. Follow their links for downloads. The recommended products, including Microsoft Forefront and MS Security Essentials, are available to us at no charge. Microsoft's security products receive their updates through Microsoft Update service, along with updates to Windows and MS applications like Office.

Windows users should upgrade to the current release to benefit from the latest security features. Each major release of Windows includes significant updates to system security and anti-malware features. Windows 10 and 11 are under current support for ongoing system updates; no older release of Windows is safe to use on the internet any more - do not run Windows 7, XP or Vista on a system you connect to the internet. If you have a legacy system that cannot be upgraded from its out-of-support edition of Windows, it is best to keep it off the network; move data off such systems manually by removable media rather than via network.

Keep your system set to allow automatic Windows Updates. If you want to avoid interruption of long jobs, choose “download updates and ask me when to install”; otherwise automatic installation could cause an unattended reboot.

The UofT MS Campus Agreement in effect provides a 'site license' for Microsoft Office for any university-owned PCs running Windows or Apple OS X. Access installers via your faculty or staff UTORid at the microsoft.utoronto.ca website.

Faculty and staff may purchase one personal-use MS Office license for just $11 through the Campus Agreement program; these can be installed on two computers. Versions for Windows and for Apple OS X are available. (You cannot get one Windows and one OS X version.)

Many Microsoft applications are also available at a discount to students and staff for personal purchase via the Campus Computerstore for use on computers owned by you personally, including Office, MS Visio, Project, Publisher, and Visual Studio.

A wide range of technical software is available for use within ECE. Different research groups have their own selection of licenses for products specific to their work areas.

Many technical engineering software packages can be licensed at very attractive rates through CMC Microsystems www.cmc.ca on a yearly subscription basis through their “Designer” subscription program; details of the program are described on this page. Subscriptions are per professor and cover all researchers that professor supervises for the specific CMC licensed products the professor selects under their subscription. Each user must set up a CMC login, and have their supervisor activate their CMC login as a member of his or her group. Most CMC licenses are accessed via special tools called “CADpass” and “CADactivate” - see the CMC.ca site for detailed instructions.

ECE holds licenses for many products such as MATLAB which are managed with concurrent network license management: to use the product, you must be connected to our network, and the network license server has a set number of users who can “check out” a license for any given feature at the same time. If all licenses are in use and you try to use such a feature, you'll get a message saying no licenses are available. Please ask your colleagues if they see that type of message often for this specific package. If so, your professor may need to order more licenses for that feature. Please report any recurring license shortages by email to ecehelp at ece.toronto.edu so we can monitor this.

Also, please be sure to release any licenses you are no longer using as soon as you can. Note that toolbox or blockset licenses once claimed are only released when you exit from Matlab. There's no way to release a toolbox or blockset license separately. So if there are any toolboxes in high demand in your group, plan to finish a task and quit from Matlab, then start Matlab again before beginning a new task using a different selection of tools. We have configured the Matlab license server to release any checked-out license that goes unused for four hours so scare licenses do not remain locked up indefinitely.

ECE's network license includes a wide range of Matlab toolboxes and Simulink blocksets; see our Matlab page for details. Many others are also available for purchase; see Mathworks website for more info. Contact your supervisor about any suggested additions. Professors pay the initial cost to order new toolboxes, while the research computing group handles annual license renewals. For inquiries about adding toolboxes or blocksets to our existing Matlab network license, contact ecehelp at ece.utoronto.ca