Changes to MSFT Office Licenses

Over the past 20 plus years we’ve used a lot of software, including most of the software “Suites” produced by software companies. Back in “the day”, MSFT, Lotus, Borland and others made huge, expensive software packages that included every app/program a user could want. Only a few of us chose to mix and match. I still prefer Lotus Organizer 5.0 and Approach 9.5 from the 1990s to all of the replacements that have come out. But I also prefer WordPerfect from (now) Corel as a word processor and MSFT Publisher as a publishing app. Maybe I have always been an App user and the industry finally caught up with me!

MSFT has released Office 2013 and it is the antithesis of their previous software model. They no longer ship discs at all. Everything from MSFT is now a download. They are trying ti leapfrog their enemies and turn PCs into Phablets. It will be interesting to see how this works out.

Since you can no longer buy discs what you are buying is what MSFT wants you to have. Here’s what ZDNet thinks of it:

That’s more true than ever with Office 2013. Here’s a list of the stark difference between perpetual-license editions of the Office 2013 and the equivalent products sold through subscription:

• You get much less software compared with the subscription editions. Office Home and Student, at a cost of $140 for a single license, gives you Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote. With an Office 365 Home Premium subscription, you get those programs and Outlook, Publisher, and Access.
• You have to pay for future versions. The subscription version always entitles you to the most recent version. With a perpetual license, you pay once but have to pay all over again for new versions.
• Multi-PC editions are no longer available. In some editions of previous Office releases, Microsoft included the right to install the software on two or three PCs. With Office 2013, the retail editions are for one PC, no exceptions.
• Your perpetual license is locked to one PC. The new license agreement contains identical language for all three retail editions: “Can I transfer the software to another computer or user? You may not transfer the software to another computer or user. You may transfer the software directly to a third party only as installed on the licensed computer, with the Certificate of Authenticity label and this agreement.” That’s a change from previous Office versions, which entitled you to reassign licenses between devices you own, as long as you do so no more than every 90 days.

That last restriction is the one that has Office users howling the most. And Microsoft’s answer is simple: If you want to move Office licenses between PCs, buy one of the subscription editions, which makes the process practically painless. From a web-based administration page, you can deactivate a license on one device and install a new copy of Office on another, without ever having to enter a product key.