I have sonar 8.5 and it says I can only install on one computer. I thought it used to be two. Is the new version more than one? I might switch if this is the case. I can't afford three copies. Are all daws like that?

If you purchased one copy of SONAR, you may install SONAR on more than one computer but you may only use SONAR on one computer at a time.

Oh so is that a simultaneous thing? Only 2? Is that mainly to stop you from giving it to other people?

Yes. No, there is no counter on installations. Yes, that is one restriction however; although you may have SONAR installed on more than one machine, you are not supposed to run SONAR on more that one machine at a time too.

It's a cool feature that I don't think many DAW's allow. What I like is you don't have to use the internet either. As long as you have your numbers.

  I just installed Steinberg Wave Lab 7 elements and it took a lot of back and forth on line before it was registered and working. A real pain. I had to drag my DAW computer down to the office as there's no internet in my studio. 
I have Cubase LE and back when my laptop died I had to go through the whole process of re registering the software with Steinberg again,, it takes way to much time. The do have a USB e licenser that you can fork over $40 and solves the issue( I think?) 

How would you like it if you had to go through 30 min of registering everytime you re -installed Sonar? 

 
I have a second copy of 8.5 on my old laptop I use for location recording. This is super important to the way I work. The way I see it, as long as it's only me running the software  I have not broken the licencing agreement. For $400+ I should be able to use it this way. All the other software I own is like this other than Steinberg.  
 
I keep a 3rd copy of Sonar on this office computer just to help trouble shoot peoples issues, I don't think that's a misuse of using  more than one copy. He-- if I'm going to go running upstairs just to find out what the option was someone was having trouble with. It's running a Soundblaster anyway so wouldn't do me much good as a DAW machine any-ways   :)  

I have X2 installed on 3 different machines.

The lack of limbs prevents me from operating more than one copy at a time, so I'm in the clear!