

Does your copy of Office 2013 die with your computer? - mhw
http://www.theage.com.au/technology/technology-news/does-your-copy-of-office-2013-die-with-your-computer-20130208-2e3a1.html

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mhw
What seems bizarre about this is that the licensed software market seems to be
moving full-speed towards app stores with one-off fees, perpetual licenses and
broad usage rights across a customer's devices. But with Office 2013 Microsoft
seems to be stuck with a strategy from about 5 years ago.

Interesting data point that illustrates their confusion. On iOS the operating
system can render Office documents for you with no additional software. On a
clean install of Linux you can usually render and edit Office documents (using
Libreoffice or OpenOffice). I imagine the situation is similar on Mac OS X and
Android.

On a clean install of Windows 8 there is no software pre-installed that will
render Office documents. Worse, if you click on a .doc file the operating
system helpfully suggests that you can look for an app to open the file in the
Store. The top match for opening .doc files in the Windows 8 app Store at the
moment? Corel Office!

~~~
derefr
Microsoft make the lion's share of their money from businesses, not consumers.
And the _B2B_ software market--you know, the one Patrick Mackenzie says you
should target if at all possible--is pretty much exactly aligned with
Microsoft right now: per-seat SaaS subscription models.

Your point about "confusion" comes apart when you realize that there is almost
nobody who wants to _use_ Office, who then purchases a computer _with_
Windows, but _without_ Office. Computers bought from big-box stores already
have Office on them. Computers bought in tech refreshes by Big Corporations
have Office imaged onto them as part of the deployment. Office is a "separate
product", but Windows isn't built to expect you to _not have_ an office suite.
The only reason it's optional at all is so you have the option to use a
_competitor_.

~~~
maguay
Actually, I've hardly ever seen a new computer come with a full licensed copy
of Office. A trial of Office, yes, but not a full-featured edition.

Office 2007/2010's 3-seat family editions, though, did get a ton more normal
users buying Office than anyone could have predicted.

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kjackson2012
The only thing holding me back from going completely to Google Docs is the
spreadsheet. For anything real, the Google Spreadsheet is simply not usable.
It's a great proof of concept, and it works for small, unuseful spreadsheets,
but for doing anything substantive, Excel is several orders of magnitude
better.

I don't care if I need to install a separate, native executable/plugin in
order to get better performance. If Google offers something that is usable, I
would gladly switch to Google Docs.

~~~
jwilliams
I tend to agree - particularly on interactivity/performance - Is there
something else that you're missing though?

That said, every time I use Google Spreadsheets I'm surprised at much it's
rapidly improving.

~~~
kjackson2012
Mainly speed, usability, etc. If you have a large spreadsheet with tens of
thousands of rows, trying to scroll back and forth makes it unusable.

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ars
How do you define device? The CPU? The storage? The specific instance of the
install?

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_of_Theseus>

~~~
nwh
I imagine it will be like some forms of DRM. If you change even a hard disk,
the entire copy is invalidated, as it's a 'different' computer.

~~~
gizmo686
I've had the unpleasent experience of within 1 week having my mother board
replaced twice, and my wireless chip and keyboard replaced once. (And my bios
service tag not properly reset after one of the motherboards). Through all of
this, Windows somehow got the idea that I was pirating it (okay, pretty clear
where it got this idea from). The license key that came with the CD did not
work. After several boot cycles and re-tries at activating windows, I decided
to try again, and when it failed that time I would use the activate by phone
option. Somehow, when I ran the activation executable that time it activated
without any further prompts. Not entirely sure what this story says about MS's
computer fingerprinting.

Also, I left out of the story that: After the last hardware change windows
booted several times without issue. After the first time it complained it was
invalid the computer would fail to boot until I re-installed GRUB from a live
cd. Between the GRUB incident and windows activating I identically let windows
install updates (which I thought couldn't be done from an unactivated
install). After these updates, when you try to log on, you get a fatal error
in its attempt to launch 'your copy of windows might not be genuine' program,
followed by a failure to launch explorer, followed by a black screen. I looked
up the error, and it seems to be a result of the update unrelated to the
activation issue. Booting into safemode and installing the update solved that.
Several failed activation attempts later and my computer was good as new.)

One of the many reasons I use GNU/Linux as my primary OS.

~~~
pi18n
Yet another case of DRM harming legitimate customers more than pirates.
Meanwhile some guy in China is selling Windows DVDs with that stuff patched
out and a full version of Office already installed.

There's absolutely no way I'd pay for an abusive experience like that, so I'll
stick with GNU/Linux as well.

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csense
This is why I hate DRM. I want to be able to use my software forever.

If it's technically and culturally capable of doing so, the manufacturer has
an economic incentive to _want_ the software to die with your computer:
That'll put you in the market for either another copy, or one of their newer
products, every few years. Even if you were perfectly happy with the old
version and upgraded your computer for other reasons.

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aarongolliver
This is stupid. There is a deactivate button on their website. It literally
took me a minute to find it the first time I as looking for it. I've been able
to deactivate and reactivate on more than two computers. The author should
have done some research before spreading FUD.

<http://i.imgur.com/Ei5wx1V.png>

~~~
randomfool
The article focused on the license terms, not what you can get away with. If
you run a small business and don't want to worry about BSA license audits,
this stuff matters.

It also appears that you're using a student version of Office, the licensing
terms are most likely different for that version.

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eli
I will say that Office 2010 OEM licenses were a pretty good deal IMHO. Yes,
you could only install them once... but they were close to half the price of a
retail version. At least for me, it worked out to be cheaper to just bite the
bullet and buy another license in the case of catastrophic hardware failure or
major hardware upgrade.

Looks like the pricing is more confusing (and higher) for 2013 though.

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runT1ME
What if you install Office on a VM? Can you run the VM from multiple machines?
Can you move the VM from your old computer to your newer computer?

~~~
pixl97
You 'Can'. The issue is Microsoft doesn't think you should (I believe you have
to use a VL).

As for Windows VMs, I've found if you keep what is presented to Windows
stable, it doesn't know the difference. Keep the MAC address on the network
card static (this means you can't run two copies on the same network at the
same time, which by the license you shouldn't anyway). After running on a
number of different processors Windows may want to reauthorize though.

It would not be surprising if they put code that detected a VM in Win8 and
Office 2013 some time in the future (or it's already hidden there)

~~~
phaus
>It would not be surprising if they put code that detected a VM in Win8 and
Office 2013 some time in the future.

That would be really unfortunate. I run Windows 8 Pro in a VM with a valid
license, mostly for the purpose of using Office 2013, which is also a valid
license.

~~~
nwh
I realise that software like VMWare present their virtual devices as their own
brand ('VMWare Network Adaptor' and alike), but isn't one of the points of
virtualisation that the client doesn't know it's being run in a VM? At least I
presume you could make the VM completely transparent, short of running timing
tests on the virtual devices.

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tedunangst
I love reading tech stories from sites that recommend I next read a story
about "Killer Vaginas".

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quasque
I suppose its a vaguely interesting technical point regarding terms and
conditions, but in reality people will just go ahead and reinstall it anyway -
with no penalty. I don't really see how this EULA change actually changes
anything in practice.

~~~
eli
Is that possible? I'm not the software will allow it. The OEM version phones
home with your license key during install.

~~~
quasque
I've done it before with Office 2010, but I must admit I've not tried the
latest 2013.

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thoughtcriminal
That said, I subscribed to the online MS Office suite (w/ SkyDrive and some
other goodies) a few days ago and I'm impressed. The Microsoft user experience
is pretty slick nowadays.

I've even switched from Google to Bing and Chrome to Internet Explorer for a
month. At first the "newness" of it all was a bit jarring, like navagating an
alien landscape, but after only a few days I don't think I'm ever going back.

Do yourself a solid and give it a test drive.

~~~
geraldchan
I tried this too and found the experience sucked. Microsoft just can't get its
head out of the 90's. They still don't get the Internet. I think they never
recovered after that.

