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MS Office 2013 Home/Business - non-transferable (1 PC p.person) - Caveat emptor.

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kfitting:
Despite not liking the way MS is going with Office, the biggest reason I dont switch is lack of VBA support.  Since my work uses MS Office I have many hours invested in VBA... switching away from MS kills all that effort.  I understand VBA has "no future" (different takes on what this means looking around the web), but IT rules give no other options at work, and I'm not going to "start over" at home.

f0dder:
Humm, some people on Slashdot say that you can login to your office2013 (not *365!) account and de-auth for the current PC and auth for another - are they wrong?

Is there anything (intelligible) from Microsoft itself, or is all this based on people interpreting EULAs without actually trying the product? Does "non-transferable" really mean you can't move it to another PC, or that you cannot give the license to another person?

I wouldn't put it beyond MS to attempt something like this, especially considering they probably want to move people to their subscription based Office365... but the information on the licensing seems pretty muddy to me.

Joe Hone:
There are 4 cousins in my family who all started college this year - all were supposed to show up with access to MS Word on their PC or laptop. I encouraged them to install LibreOffice instead and so far none has had a single issue with that platform in an MS Word environment. I really hope for a paradigm shift in which some of these albatrosses collapse and the innovators can have greater market impact, even if their offerings are freeware.

Carol Haynes:
Its really interesting - I was writing a comment on Amazon.co.uk yesterday in response to a review and the website description very clearly stated that the software was for one computer only and not transferable.

I have just looked and all versions have the information about licensing removed on the product pages.

Maybe MS is sensing the mood and backtracking already.

What nobody has said is how users (home or office) with poor internet speeds are supposed to install this software without a disk? I have loads of customers struggling with 256kb or less broadband speeds and even some still on dial up - are MS going to provide a disk for those people? It isn't so bad installing the basic package just start it at the end of the day and leave it to it but they are using the incremental download the bits you need when you need them approach which is a complete PITA at the best of times but some people are going to be REALLY unhappy users.

Actually if you go to office.microsoft.com and look at any of the Office 2013 packages (assuming you can find them as they are conspicuous by their absence - and only Office 365 show) you will find this statement under the Buy Now button:

For 1 PC, non-transferrable
--- End quote ---

If you go ahead and click Buy Now on the order page it clearly states:

For installation and use on 1 PC only. License cannot be transferred to another PC.
--- End quote ---

There is transfer management in Office 365 subscriptions - maybe that is what was being discussed.

40hz:
Humm, some people on Slashdot say that you can login to your office2013 (not *365!) account and de-auth for the current PC and auth for another - are they wrong?

Is there anything (intelligible) from Microsoft itself, or is all this based on people interpreting EULAs without actually trying the product? Does "non-transferable" really mean you can't move it to another PC, or that you cannot give the license to another person?

I wouldn't put it beyond MS to attempt something like this, especially considering they probably want to move people to their subscription based Office365... but the information on the licensing seems pretty muddy to me.

-f0dder (February 14, 2013, 09:22 AM)
--- End quote ---

Having waded through the licensing training for partners, I have no doubts that if Microsoft says non-transferable from original machine, they mean exactly that.

Looks like they've removed the transferability option that used to come with the retail versions. Apparently, the restriction to original machine that used to characterize only the OEM versions that shipped with a new machine now apply to all single copy purchases. Hope they lower the retail package price to the OEM price level if they're serious about this. Because transferability was the only justification for charging a higher price for the retail product.

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