

Microsoft Makes Retail Versions Of Office Single Install - chmars
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130213/10093021963/microsoft-makes-retail-versions-office-single-install.shtml

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mxfh
I don't see what the fuzz is about for now.

a. One Copy per Device. You may install one copy of the software on one
device. That device is the "licensed device."

b. Licensed Device. You may only use one copy of the software on the licensed
device at a time.

c. Portable Device. You may install another copy of the software on a portable
device for use by the single primary user of the licensed device.

from [http://www.theage.com.au/technology/technology-news/does-
you...](http://www.theage.com.au/technology/technology-news/does-your-copy-of-
office-2013-die-with-your-computer-20130208-2e3a1.html#ixzz2Kyfkv9DP)

The original australian article states two non-definitive answers:

A: "A perpetual license of Office 2013 can only be installed on one personal
computer. This means that the customer can only install it on one device,
either a desktop or laptop, but not both. If the customer has a system crash,
they are allowed to reinstall Office on that same computer. If there are
problems with this process, customers can contact Microsoft technical support"

B: "No, the customer cannot transfer the license from one PC to another PC."

I would bet on A and and a confused PR department. Of cause if you wan't to
report some kind of "news" you would root for B rather than investigate
further.

~~~
gnu8
Just tell them it is the same computer, just with an upgraded CPU, RAM, mobo,
case, screws, cables, ...

Or install office in a VM you can shuffle around at will forever. Perhaps even
a Thinapp.

You could even keep your virtualized office on Dropbox and use it on all ten
of your personal computers (but not concurrently of course).

~~~
eli
I never really understood this line of thinking. Rather than trying to "hack"
the license terms, you should just buy a new license when you buy a new
computer, since that's what you agreed to.

If you're willing to violate the license, why not just pirate the thing in the
first place?

~~~
kamjam
It's things like this that drive those pirating numbers up!

VM's and the like may be fine for us tech/power users, but for most normal
users who just pop the DVD in and install, then to be greeted with a "sorry,
buy another copy" this is going to be very annoying!

~~~
rayiner
Lots of products/services are annoying. I usually address the problem by
simply not using them.

~~~
kamjam
I agree, but some things you just cannot get away with NOT using. Too many
people are used to using MS Office. As good (or bad) as the open source
alternatives are, too many of my friends/relatives are used to the interface.
It's a huge re-training exercise to get them to use something else
unfortunately.

I still use Office 2007, because there is nothing in 2010 and doubt 2013 that
I will use outside of a business environment.

~~~
rayiner
So what? I fly commercial airlines even though they are terrible because
sometimes I have no alternatives. I still pay for my ticket instead of
sneaking on board.

Microsoft gets to extract a high price for Office because its popular and the
product has a strong network effect. That's one of the advantages of having an
immensely popular product. Either use it or don't--don't try to justify
pirating it.

~~~
kamjam
I didn't justify pirating it, I said it would drive numbers up, there's a
difference.

And your comparison is flawed. When you buy an airline ticket you know you are
buying a single use ticket. If you want a travel comparison then it is like
buying a car and saying you can only use it in a single state.

 _Microsoft gets to extract a high price for Office because its popular and
the product has a strong network effect. That's one of the advantages of
having an immensely popular product._

Sure, a high price is one thing but charging people twice for different
devices or charging again for changing your machine is going a little too far.
The _price_ is not the issue, it's the pricing model.

 _Either use it or don't_

Like I said, it's not as black and white as that. With this pricing model I
won't use Office 2013.

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HarrietJones
Meanwhile, if you get it online, it's $99.00 a year for up to 5 devices, and
moving the license from one machine to another is as simple as logging on and
deregistering the invalid device.

Microsoft have been skeevy in the past when it comes to licences, but I've no
complaints with the current system.

------
valuegram
"place their own customers directly in their crosshairs. Your immediate
reaction may be to blast the previous sentence as hyperbole, but you would be
wrong to do so."

Of course this is hyperbole. Don't be ridiculous.

~~~
jahabrewer
Steve Ballmer literally aiming guns at customers in Microsoft store.

Story at 11.

~~~
CurtHagenlocher
As a Microsoft employee, I can confirm that this is true -- but only when he
needs a break from "roaming the halls of Microsoft swinging a baseball bat".

------
noonespecial
Microsoft is _the_ Office company right now. A great many people run windows
_just to run Office_. This is not a boat I would rock quite so hard just now
if I were them.

~~~
rednukleus
Office is more important to them now than Windows. I believe that they are
pushing the subscription model hard so that people will pay monthly for Office
as a cross platform solution.

I hope they succeed in making Office cross platform, but I hate the
subscription model and hope they fail in making that the norm.

~~~
Shorel
I, on the other hand, want them to succeed with the Office subscription model.

Nothing will doom them so fast than constant predictable revenue.

In fact, I think this will also help Office alternatives, as they could try a
cheaper subscription. Nowadays any Office alternative has to be free, and this
means almost no funds for development.

~~~
rednukleus
If Office alternatives can't charge a small one off fee, what makes you think
they will be able to charge a subscription?

~~~
Shorel
Different business models are evaluated in a different way.

A small one off fee is not a viable business model. You either have to charge
small recurrently fees, or have a big one off fee to be able to sell to
business.

AFAIK, Google Apps for Business already charges a subscription for some
customers.

------
mahmud
LibreOffice: good as gold.

<http://www.libreoffice.org/>

~~~
UnoriginalGuy
Perhaps as good as gold but not nearly as good as Office 2000 was...

Seriously what is wrong with Libre/Open Office's slow ugly UI? I mean even
GIMP finally managed to modernise its look and feel.

~~~
mahmud
For every micro-second Libre/Open Office stays ugly or slow, I pass the time
by thinking about how cripled/proprietary MS Office is, and time flies fast.
YMMV.

~~~
rednukleus
Proprietary, yes. Crippled, no. Excel is vastly better than anything else out
there, and if you want you can even save to open formats.

I hope open source catches up, I really do, but saying MS Office is crippled
is plain false.

~~~
mahmud
You're replying to a post in a thread about Microsoft limiting the number of
installs per license. I don't know about your definition, but that qualifies
as "crippling" in my book.

I choose to use Free software because I value my time and freedom. It's
Libre/Open Office for me. You are free to choose whatever you want.

~~~
mynameisvlad
Enjoy your crippled - functionally - piece of software.

There, I said it. LibreOffice may be alright, but it's certainly not good. It
looks like it came out of the 90s, and it, nor anyone else's, spreadsheet
making will never even come close to Excel's.

------
venomsnake
My company is migrating away from office. We use google docs and Libre Office
for internal documents and only few copies of office for the external.

With html and css, and the paperless office gaining traction Word and
Powerpoint will have a hard time defending their existence, as is the majority
of other apps. For me it seems that the only really good application that is
worth the money right now in the suite is Excel.

~~~
rednukleus
> the paperless office gaining traction

Really? Is there any evidence of this? Most attempts I've seen at the
paperless office have been failures.

Also, even in the attempts I have seen, nobody is writing reports in HTML +
CSS. Everything is in Word/ppt/Excel, usually on SharePoint.

~~~
venomsnake
Not paperless but paper reduced, point taken. I know we are changing toner
cartridges less often than a decade ago. So we are using less paper than
before.

What I meant for the html + css is that anchoring your documents to the a4
sheet, while people are consuming more and more content on screens of various
sizes and less on paper is somewhat strange. Also google docs are html + css
and a lot of javascript :)

Office has great advantage and is not going anywhere soon. But while in 1999
it was impossible to not have office, now depending on your company and
employees can go from mildly inconvenient to annoying.

5 years from now - will you worry that some content looks great on paper, or
that it looks great on the person's tablet or google glass. If your answer is
the second - word is in for a rough ride.

~~~
rednukleus
Depends on the industry. In the financial services industry it is still
essentially impossible to not use Windows + Office. Everyone in the industry
knows how to use them, no training required, and it ensures everything is
interoperable.

Theres also not much of an incentive to change. Using open source software
won't save that much money, and would require training almost every employee.
If open source office software is ever going to break its way into big
enterprise, its going to have to get widely used by consumers first.

------
meaty
Straw + Camel's back.

I tend to switch machines at least once a year for various reasons. My office
license goes with me and is removed from the original machine. If they won't
allow that, then I won't be upgrading and will be preemptively migrating to
something else.

I don't think Microsoft realise how easy it is to just move to another
platform/tool these days!

------
ratherbefuddled
Microsoft have done a fantastic piece of marketing for OpenOffice and
LibreOffice here.

------
prawks
Original article referenced: [http://www.theage.com.au/technology/technology-
news/does-you...](http://www.theage.com.au/technology/technology-news/does-
your-copy-of-office-2013-die-with-your-computer-20130208-2e3a1.html)

My question follows his:

 _Exactly how is this enforced? Is it just "forbidden" or are you actually
blocked from using the retail activation code on a new computer? Is it tracked
via your Microsoft cloud account? What if you change some of the hardware in
your PC, will Office 2013 complain that it's a new computer?_

I'm very interested to see how Microsoft attempts to prevent spoofing. Does
anyone with experience in this type of DRM have a comment on how a device with
no real unique identifying property is tracked? As mentioned above, using the
hardware configuration would have serious issues, and is certaintly not
unique. A "cloud account" I can't imagine can tie itself to a device any
easier (IP, obviously not, MAC address, not a good idea, etc.). How can MSoft
allow re-installing it on a reformatted device, but not taking it to a new
device?

~~~
meaty
They already do this with WGA/Activation. It's a combination of disk IDs, MAC
address, graphics card etc.

------
scholia
Why didn't Techdirt just deactivate Office 2013 and install it on another PC?
Uninstallation is a one-click Fixit at
<http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2739501> Uninstall Microsoft Office 2013 or
Office 365

~~~
meaty
That's only OK if your computer is still working.

~~~
scholia
Which it usually is. If not, I'd expect a phone call to solve the problem, at
worst.

Either way, it's something Techdirt should have covered....

~~~
meaty
You've obviously not dealt with Microsoft support then?

I have had an activation issue open for 6 months before I got a resolution in
the past and I had to go through my Gold Partner membership to get it
resolved.

In that 6 month period, I used a cracked copy of Office.

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lostnet
Hmm, this article answers nothing for me since I would never run windows
directly on hardware.

What determines if my virtual machine is one "system" across host systems,
visible "hardware" changes and/or windows license keys?

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patja
I have a hard enough time justifying upgrading Office. Versions n-1 are almost
always "good enough" and I see no killer features that justify these new
licensing restrictions that at a minimum double the cost for the same install
base. I usually skip at least every other release. This has given me the
justification to stay on Office 2010 indefinitely, particularly given the fact
that I will probably rebuild at least 20% of our PCs in the next year, and we
take full advantage of the second install on a portable device. Viva la Office
2010!

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alexrson
The problem with Office is that it is too good.

Until free/open alternatives like libreOffice or googleDocs catch up MSFT has
no incentive to hold down the bloat or demonstrate good customer service.

