Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft Kills Office Anti-Piracy Program
CWmike writes "Microsoft last week killed the Office Genuine Advantage anti-piracy service that first checked — and later nagged — whether customers were running legal copies of Office. ZDNet blogger Ed Bott first reported on Microsoft's move after a tipster pointed him toward a support document on the company's site. That Dec. 17 document simply noted that Office Genuine Advantage 'has been retired,' but offered no explanation. A Microsoft spokeswoman told Computerworld on Monday, 'The program has served its purpose and thus we have decided to retire the program.'"
You know, its funny how these Slashdot articles line up with work.
I just got back from a weeks vacation to learn that we have an upcoming Microsoft Audit here in January. They're going to be viewing our server licenses, office, all that kind of stuff. We're not too concerned since we purchase these things OEM bundled all nice and tidy, but on the odd occaison where a re-install of Windows was necessary and the Office Product key lost, we had this neat version of Office 2003 that didn't need a key to install, imagine that.
On top of that - we actually have about 150 thousand dollars worth of Client Access Licenses in use on our exchange server that aren't paid for, JUST in our disabled accounts (whose email store we haven't removed since the CEO wants to be able to access them at a moments notice, and we just started the process of archiving them a couple months ago).
I have told my boss numerous times that we could have switched to OpenOffice or LibreOffice long ago. Almost no retraining really required, the layout is largely the same. No licensing fees. But he pushes back that what they are paying for is insurance. When something doesn't work between MS Office versions he can blame Microsoft. Perfect deflection. He doesn't want to be the guy who made everyone switch off Microsoft and then be expected to fully support it more than MS Office. Its alright, he has his reasons. I don't blame him. I would take the flak and argue the savings - I've personally had enough trouble just getting MS Office to work properly I couldn't see any of the other products possibly being any worse (Especially since OpenOffice can now be deflected to Oracle, Huzzah!).
I -WISH- my company was a large account that threatened to go somewhere else if Microsoft kept nagging us... My coworkers say that what'll probably happen is that the guy will come in, survey, ask for a dollar amount, the company will write a cheque, and IT won't get Christmas bonuses this year.
Time to look for a new place to work? Yeah it's going through our (the IT Department's) minds quite a bit. Resumes in hand.
My computer like a few came with MSO pre-installed. I didn't mind the initial legit check (I still have the licence key) and subsequent download of updates. It's when a few months later it asked, nay, demanded to check again. Later I opened a document and it asked again, and again, and again so on and so forth. An e-mail natter back and forth with someone whose spelling could be better at Microsoft help got me nowhere. "Have you entered the correct licence key?" "Have you un-installed and re-installed, then re-entered the licence key?" There must be something better I thought. So I gave Open Office a try. A free office program? It must be a bit naff, full of bugs I thought. Well I was surprised, I've had no problems with it and it covers all my needs. I haven't looked back since.