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Retail Copies of Office 2013 Are Tied To a Single Computer Forever
An anonymous reader writes "With the launch of Office 2013 Microsoft has seen fit to upgrade the terms of the license agreement, and it's not in favor of the end user. It seems installing a copy of the latest version of Microsoft's Office suite of apps ties it to a single machine. For life. On previous versions of Office it was a different story. The suite was associated with a 'Licensed Device' and could only be used on a single device. But there was nothing to stop you uninstalling Office and installing it on another machine perfectly legally. With that option removed, Office 2013 effectively becomes a much more expensive proposition for many."
This is so not the point.
For users of Open Office or those who short Microsoft Stock
not if it phones home
You can haz open source solution with full MS Office compatibility...
Log into your Office account and deregister the current installation. That will free it up for installation to a new/different machine. You can do this as often as you want.
install it in a virtual machine, run it from there, this is lame.
I am guessing they will be providing a license that allows you to do that. For a premium of course.
Doesn't affect us too much, since we've switched most of our internals to Libre Office, and it won't affect most of our clients who're quite happy with Office 2010 and a few who still use Office 2003. If your org needs new installations, there are better places to spend money than the office suite.
If computers were people, I'd be a misanthrope.
install to virtual machine, then make copies of that virtual machine. problem solved.
I do not think that this "solution" will work for a typical user. VM machines are not simple to setup and use for the masses as they are for /. users.
As a matter of fact I do not think this will impact the majority of users at all. Most people buy their software with their computer system and are not adverse to having to buy a new version when they get a new machine.
"Maybe this world is another planet's hell"
Aldous Huxley
What happens if your CPU or Motherboard dies, and you cant get that socket type CPU/Motherboard now... Or your HDD dies even
In some countries, this stipulation would be against consumer laws I'm sure (maybe the EU, also NZ is quite possible)
Rather than mess with a VM and slightly degraded performance I'd opt for a free alternative (e.g. Libre Office) although a VM would provide some added security...
"install it in a virtual machine, run it from there, this is lame."
I would be inclined to go with one of 2 "solutions":
(A) Use a software crack. What the hell. I paid for it, it's mine, I'll do what I want with it.
(B) The choice I would more likely make: go with Open Office or Libre Office.
It's really not much of a contest, is it? I've been using Open Office and Libre Office for more than 10 years now, precisely because of this kind of horseshit from Microsoft.
what about the 99.5% of people who have no clue what that means?
there's no reason to shift any of the blame onto consumers for this. fuck microsoft.
Non-commercial use: Any number of Macs that you own and control. Commercial use: Any number of computers used by the same single person, or one computer used by any number of persons.
One computer and can't move to a different computer? That's ridiculous. So if sell your computer and buy a better one, you have to re-buy the software? Or if your computer breaks? Or your computer is stolen? I wonder what your insurance company will say if your computer is stolen, they pay for a replacement, and then you say that instead of restoring your apps from your backup you want them to pay for new copies?
install to virtual machine, then make copies of that virtual machine. problem solved.
I do not think that this "solution" will work for a typical user. VM machines are not simple to setup and use for the masses as they are for /. users.
As a matter of fact I do not think this will impact the majority of users at all. Most people buy their software with their computer system and are not adverse to having to buy a new version when they get a new machine.
Ok, let's expand a bit. It should be relatively straightforward for a knowledgeable person to create a self-contained virtual appliance with a copy of Window Du jour plus a copy of Office 20-whatever with all the common options (or every option) and require the user to only input the license key for the OS and the license key for Office. Install procedure would be to insert disk, run Setup, get prompted for the required license keys, and get an icon on your desktop that when invoked, brings up Office in a virtual box.
This is, of course, non-trivial to create. But all it takes is a single (not inconsiderable) effort, the results of which are replicated endlessly.
Or, we could all stick with a previous version of Office, and Microsoft can go screw. I'm still using Office 2000. Works fine on Windows 7.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
I use Excel & Access 2003 on a daily basis (Access provides a simple front end to SQL databases). The only time I load up Excel 2010 is when the sheet has more then 256 columns (rare) or ~65k rows (more common now). The ribbon is a pain as I lose all my custom menu bars (and the after thought of a hack put into the ribbon for this sucks). What is there about 2013 that would appeal to a non-corporate end user? Saving to a cloud? We have Google Drive/DropBox folders for that.
That can't be true, because it's too good to be true. If a copy of office were tied to a single machine forever, that copy of office would die with the machine and eventually office would become extinct. You'd see beat up computers with yellowed cases and burned in screens in endangered software sanctuaries. Or the world would realize that equivalent software is available elsewhere for less money (or free). But we all know Microsoft won't let that happen because software survives by being propagated from computer to computer, paid or not.
...they'd rather see Home users use a different licensing model... something with more long term revenue for the company. One way to help such a new model would be to make the current purchase model less attractive.
nahh. That couldn't be.
Microsoft is doing their damndest to make me not want to use Windows anymore. Everything about Windows 8 sounds like an anti-consumer nuisance, they've spent 6 years turning the Xbox dashboard into the worst piece of clumsy advertising software as opposed to a valid gaming console OS, and now this crap.
Yep, you're days are numbered Microsoft. Have fun burning what little bit of good will still exists for you.
Microsoft isn't -- anti-Microsoft bloggers looking for ad views without any supporting information are doing their damnedest to make you not want to use Windows anymore, specifically by targeting the anti-Microsoft bias that a specific subset of people seem to have. A second article that got all of its information purely from the first is not a confirmation, either.
An empirical test, though -- I've, in fact, moved a 2013 license between systems without any problem. YMMV, and I didn't read the license agreement, but one post trolling for ad views being referenced by a second blog trolling for ad views, both being linked by Slashdot in its continuing quest to troll its readers to drive ad views isn't really a good reason to make any decisions, except perhaps not reading Slashdot anymore.
install to virtual machine, then make copies of that virtual machine. problem solved.
This is why most "normal" people don't understand nerds. Every problem always has a technical solution. Always. Even if that problem isn't technical in nature and the solution completely misses the point. The issue isn't that it's physically impossible to install to multiple computers, as a hack will be around shortly to eliminate that limitation. The problem is in the license that's trying to bleed more money out of the user. The solution to that problem is to not buy the new version of Office. Either use an older version or switch to something more open.
If I add a disk, is it the same device?
If I swap the disk, is the same device.
If I keep everything but swap the CPU, is it a new computer?
If I keep the CPU but swap the motherboard?
If I swap components incrementally, when do I need to buy a new license?
Does the software actually check?
in many countries whose law permits the sale of second hand software licenses (eg pre-owned games). What Microsoft's legal team has forgotten (ignored?) is that state and federal law override any and all conditions they put in their EULA and they have no legal recourse when they blatantly ignore local law.
I use Office 2012 at work, albeit not as my main tool. After a bit over a year I was at the point where I was reasonably familiar with the ribbon and started to prefer it over Office 2000 (which I used before). So I think there is a bit of an advantage to the new UI, but it is a small one and requires a lot of time to learn the new ways of interacting with the program. Probably not worth it from a usability point of view.
Office 2012 crashes a lot less than Office 2000 though, so it was good to get the new version anyway.
At home, however, I prefer Libre Office: :-)
Legally available for free as in beer, and it is more than sufficient for the few letters I write
C - the footgun of programming languages
Or, we could all stick with a previous version of Office, and Microsoft can go screw. I'm still using Office 2000. Works fine on Windows 7.
This is the correct answer.
I am still using Office 2003 because (a) It works just fine and does what I need. Newer versions contain absolutely nothing of benefit to me. (b) No "activation" or other bullshit required, which means I can easily transfer it to another computer when needed. (c) It doesn't have the god awful ribbon that was introduced with Office 2007 and rendered the program unusable.
Virtual machine machines might not be simple, but virtual machines can be.
I'll subscribe to Slashdot when I see a month without a dupe, a typo, or an article the "editors" didn't read.
You know, I think I know a better solution. Tell the whole world about this abrogation of natural rights. Tell your friends. Spread the MS hate. Go post it to Facebook, twitter or whatever. Do it now.
The ribbon is good in that you can set things by example visually that actually tick multiple settings at once. After learning it, I actually prefer it and don't like using a word processor without it anymore.
Peter predicted that you would "deliberately forget" creation 2000 years ago...
I just posted this on my facebook account. Feel free to post it everywhere.
Microsoft has just raised the bar on greed. MS Office 2013 has a non-transferable license, it can only be installed on 1 computer. So, you lose this computer or it dies or you upgrade, you lose your license to MS Office 2013. See http://www.geek.com/articles/geek-pick/retail-copies-of-office-2013-are-tied-to-a-single-computer-forever-20130213/ for moredetails.
This *will* be the year of Linux on the Desktop!
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
Why cloud the situation with facts? :) Here's the interesting part: "Because the software is licensed, not sold, Microsoft reserves all rights (such as rights under intellectual property laws) not expressly granted in this agreement. In particular, this license does not give you any right to, and you may not: use or virtualize features of the software separately, publish, copy (other than the permitted backup copy), rent, lease, or lend the software; transfer the software (except as permitted by this agreement), attempt to circumvent technical protection measures in the software, reverse engineer, decompile, or disassemble the software, except if the laws where you live permit this even when our agreement does not. In that case, you may do only what your law allows. " So by buying it you aren't actually buying it, you are long term leasing it. This way they can circumvent all usual consumer purchasing rights.
I am still using Office 2003 because (a) It works just fine and does what I need. Newer versions contain absolutely nothing of benefit to me. (b) No "activation" or other bullshit required, which means I can easily transfer it to another computer when needed. (c) It doesn't have the god awful ribbon that was introduced with Office 2007 and rendered the program unusable.
And I'll continue to use Libre Office :) No activation, no ribbon, works fine and does what I need.
There will be the inevitable response: I need feature X that only MS Office has. This will not get an argument from me. If you need MS Office, go for it. Do what you have to do. I'm just happy that I don't need it myself and don't have to deal with all this nonsense.
Yes and no.
I did a bit of IT consulting a while back for a small company owned by a friend of mine that upgraded one of their (dead) machines to Win7 from XP. One of their pieces of software (that isn't supported by the vendor anymore, natch) had some copy protection on it that ABSOLUTELY REFUSED to run on Win7. As in "every single post I could find about it on Google said 'don't bother'" and no amount of backwards-compatibility junk would get Win7 to make it work, period (though admittedly this was Win7 Home Prem, so no built-in VM stuff).
The solution: VirtualBox, running a spare XP license, and just this one application. With the VBox tools installed, I set it to resize the desktop automatically when the window's resized, put the taskbar on autohide, and it works great (nice and snappy for an office-type app). When you click the close box on the window, VBox suspends the VM. When you open it back up again, it un-suspends. Plus you get snapshotting and portability of the environment.
They were not sophisticated enough to pull this off, but their local IT guy (me) was, and this is a little 5-person extermination company...
"Time flies like an arrow; fruit flies like a banana." --Groucho Marx
Fire up a virtual machine every time someone emails you a document, and then move that document over to the virtual machine (after it books), open up your Office suite, and then move the document back.
Man, that is sure convenient.
It is almost like Microsoft is trying to encourage people to move over to the perpetual subscription method by making the traditional way of purchasing 2013 a pain in the ass.
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
I'm waiting to see how the resident MS shills are going to positively spin this one. No unbiased person could be in favor of this.
Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave.
The story linked from the Slashdot article mostly just summarizes Turner's already-concise (but still more-detailed) article, and wraps it in a different set of ads.
~Idarubicin
But I don't need "feature X"; the only "feature" that I need is that the person I'm sending the document to expects it to be in MS Office's format because that's what they'll use to open and modify the file, and "mostly compatible" isn't good enough.
If I was using MS Office and they were using LibreOffice, I'd be in the same boat (the ODT export from MS Office, like the OfficeXML export from Libre, is "almost good enough", which is the polite way of saying "not good enough") except of course I could just download LibreOffice for free and use it.
There are network effects in play, is what I'm saying.
You can create deep ties between guest and host and exchange data between them trivially. Setup a folder that both OS's can reach, problem solved. If done right its the same as tabbing through windows.
Good-bye
In Adam Turner's article (on which the blog post linked in the Slashdot summary is based) Microsoft declares that " If the customer has a system crash, they are allowed to reinstall Office on that same computer..." but with the caveat, "No, the customer cannot transfer the license from one PC to another PC." Sounds like I'm allowed to upgrade my computer, and I'm allowed to replace broken parts...I just can't "transfer" the license between PCs.
Who knows the way to fix an old Fiat?
Step 1: Raise hood.
Step 2: Turn the radiator cap counterclockwise until fully loosed.
Step 3: Lift radiator cap straight up, at least six inches.
Step 4: Remove old Fiat from under radiator cap. Replace with new Fiat.
Step 5: Screw radiator cap back in place.
Step 6: Close hood.
Clearly, the solution in this situation is similar. Disconnect your mouse. Replace the computer underneath. Plug in a new computer. The license, obviously, transferred with the Theseus-mouse.
~Idarubicin
But there was nothing to stop you uninstalling Office and installing it on another machine perfectly legally. With that option removed, Office 2013 effectively becomes a much more expensive proposition for many
Or just use the pirated version of office 2013 that will come out 3 months before the official release, have no such limitations, will be much more configurable, and, of course, is free...
I don't know whose the single computer will be, but it won't be mine.
Quidnam Latine loqui modo coepi?
VM machines are not simple to setup and use for the masses as they are for /. users.
You don't have to use a whole VM machine. Just use a virtual VM machine.
It'd be nice to think this would boost use of OpenOffice and/or Libre Office, but probably not.
Fire up a virtual machine every time someone emails you a document, and then move that document over to the virtual machine (after it books), open up your Office suite, and then move the document back.
Man, that is sure convenient.
Why would you do it that way? When I read the VM suggestion, I thought it basically meant live in the VM full time. There is a post above where a person used an XP VM in Win7 for a legacy app that wouldn't run in his Win7 set up. But that was one app, not an office suite.
If you're using MS Office for everything, including Outlook for email, and you're using a VM so you can change hardware by moving the VM instead of reinstalling Office, why not fire up the VM as soon as Windows boots and put all your apps in there?
I mean, 1) you're going to spend so much time in the VM, you might as well stay in, and 2) you've done the work of making your system easy to restore to get around reinstalling Office, why not take advantage and make all your software as easy to restore?
Moving files between levels of virtualization wouldn't be an issue. You pay a price at start up, as the OS and VM boot, but a small price. And I'm in the minority as someone who still shuts down PCs. Don't most folk use sleep or hibernate, or for a desktop, just leave it one all the time?
I've only used VMs on beefy servers, never on consumer desktop or laptop hardware. Is there a performance reason you wouldn't live in the VM full time? The top level OS could be light; the only thing it is doing is handling the VM (and passing off messages between the VM and outside world? I don't know where VMs live on your OSI model.).
Anyway, I just had an issue with MS Office 2010 where my wife's HD crashed, I reinstalled (I just back up data, because you can always reinstall software, right?), then her MB went, and when reinstalling on a new machine and trying to register, it got denied as too many installs. This is legal, paid for, copy of Office.
So I downloaded a crack.
I'd switch, but the horrid VBA in Excel is still far better-documented and easier to develop for than any of the OO.org macro solutions.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Time to learn LaTex. Open Office is not suitable for complicated/large documents.
I'd switch, but the horrid VBA in Excel is still far better-documented and easier to develop for than any of the OO.org macro solutions.
Umm... this is /., we write real programs, not spreadsheet macros.
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
* Hey Steve! How's it going.
- Terrible, Bill, terrible. Nothing's going the way we expected. I mean, we tried our best with Zune - we made it brown even! - but it's no good. Some people even liked the Zune software.
* I see. What else have you tried?
- Well, we replaced the toolbar in Office with - get this - a ribbon. We told everybody it would improve their workflow.
* Bet that shook things up!
- No, people kept buying Office. The ribbon even had fans! They wanted it extended to other apps! But then I thought... XBox!
* XBox?
- Yeah... we'll put ads all over the thing! There'll be a tiny button in the corner to start the game and everywhere else... ads!
* Yes!!!
- No! People complained, but XBox Lives subscriptions are up and game sales are through the roof! Hell, we even canned Bungie and sold more Halo games than ever!
* Oh dear.
- Then I'm sure you heard about Windows 8 and Metro.
* Oh yes, terrific job there. And you tied it to Surface and Windows Phone too!
- Yes, we're all very proud of that. And now this thing with Office 2013; we're tying it to a single computer. No reinstalls. If your motherboard craps out, well, you'll just have to buy a new license!
* Surely that will work. No one will be able to ignore the message we're sending now.
- I don't know, Bill. I don't know. People liked the whole Office365 subscription thing, after all. They'll probably like this too. You know and I know that Windows and the Microsoft ecosystem is an abortion and a disaster, and that we've been striving desperately to get people to leave it for greater and better things - I can't help but remember the excellent work you did with "The Road Ahead" and leaving out the Internet entirely; you'd have thought that might have clued them in that we're just hacks - but it's just not working. But look, what if I try this next: security updates only available to people who have a paid subscription. Yeah, that might do it, don't you think?
* Never give up hope, Steve, never give up hope. I can't think of anyone better for this job. And here, toss a chair. It'll make you feel better.
What's even worse is that Home and Student is the same price but is only valid for a signle computer, instead of three.
They're really pushing Office 365, and I'm not sure I enjoy the idea.
Interestingly Office 365 is restricted in where you can use it. For some countries they just won't let you buy it. Not 'axis of evil' countries either; some of them are on the State Departments list of 'countries we REALLY want US companies doing business with".
In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.
and that's exactly the reason I don't send docs in Office format, instead I use PDF.
Mod me up/Mod me down: I wont frown as I've no crown
I did say standard (for that business). If my business used libreoffice, I would use it. It uses MS office so I use that. Yes, in principal I could ask the company to pay for my personal copy of MS office so I can work at home, but I'm a firm believer that one of the ways to be a good (eg successful) employee is to minimize the amount of effort your boss needs to spend supporting you.
There is also the issue that since I use MS office at work I am very familiar with it. Libreoffice is simliar, but the interface is a bit different. Probably not worth a few hundred $ for my time to get as familiar with libreoffice.
That said, this change is making me re-think what I will use at home. I certainly won't upgrade to office 2013, I don't want to be held hostage to microsoft for my documents. Its not that I mind spending a few hundred $, the problem is that I have no idea what the rules will be for me to use their software 10 years from now. For all I know they might go cloud-only or something else unacceptable and I won't be able to transfer my office software to whatever computer I have then.
BTW: I think android is OK.
... you have 'licensed it' from MS. There is a big difference.
and until I find a usable replacement for the features it has, I'm stuck with Office 2007. Sure it works but I'd like something that's open source instead and using a Wiki setup just doesn't cut it for me as it means installing to much additional software.
Now if I can find something that gives me 90 percent of the features (individual notebooks, insert media, text and such), I'd be able to move back to open source as my only online game now has a link to setting things up in Wine along with links to doing so in RH/Deb/Suse and others.
Mod me up/Mod me down: I wont frown as I've no crown
Honestly, virtual machines made a BIG mess out of Microsoft licensing across pretty much their whole product line. It's likely the reason they went from being the "bad guy" to the "good guy" with their friendliness towards running VMs in a flexible manner on their server products in the last couple years. (Unless they made some drastic changes, their licensing would become pretty much a joke in the world of corporate I.T. with virtual machines.)
It's still really complicated and I'm pretty sure most people don't even really understand all of it, or license their purchased MS products correctly.
For example, do you know when it's economically feasible to purchase Windows Server "Datacenter edition" (despite it's massive cost) vs. "Enterprise edition", or Enterprise vs. "Standard"? In most real-world scenarios today, everyone would be just fine buying copies of "Standard" if they wanted a Windows Server license, EXCEPT for the virtualization rules. (With "Standard", you're allowed to run 1 virtual copy as well as 1 physical installation of the product, but your virtual copy *must* be on the SAME box you installed the physical copy on. So basically, you pay for the rights to install the product on a single machine and it gives you the right to run Microsoft's "Hyper V" virtual machine solution on top of it. When you shell out about 4x the price for an Enterprise edition of the same server product? You're actually granted 4 virtual machine installations, AND they're "stackable". So if you have a big, multi-processor, powerful server and you want to fire up 8 virtual servers on the thing? You can do it by buying 2 of the Windows Enterprise edition licenses, and you'll still have a license left over to install another physical Windows server on some other box (but not with a VM running on top of it).
All fine and good, but as you can probably see -- keeping track of this stuff in a corporate setting quickly gets kind of insane. "How is this server here legally licensed?" "Well.... I have this license I purchased here for this other box, and it gave me a spare license to use on THIS one -- but you can't add X or Y to THIS box now without buying an additional license that lets you do that to it....." And we haven't even STARTED talking about Microsoft's CALs yet ("Client access licenses", which you also have to buy based on how many people are going to CONNECT to a given server!)
Frankly, I think the best bet is to flat out AVOID their products, if you care at all about remaining provably legal on your purchases. The claim that typing one of their products to a specific PC "won't affect most users at all" is dead wrong, IMO. I've seen far more times than I can count where someone called a PC service place for a computer repair, had a new motherboard installed, and now the software considers it a different PC. Only reason this didn't cause rioting in the streets YEARS ago is Microsoft's leniency in letting someone basically break their licensing rules on demand. The license key for Windows/Office/whatever complains it's not properly licensed (since it was an OEM version). Tech knows user won't pay for ANOTHER copy of the product, so he takes advantage of having access to some "not for resale/personal use only" type license keys that came with his "Microsoft Action Pack" subscription or TechNet or what-not and enters one of those. Product works again and customer is none the wiser..... But it ain't legal.
Puh-leeeeze... this whole site is written in Perl!
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
How would it phoning home make things different? All the software sees is the inside of the VM, which remains the same.
Phoning home could prevent two different copies of the VM running at the same time - which is not the point. If my computer dies, I should be able to transfer legally acquired software from the old, dead machine to the new one. By running Office inside a VM, the user can do that - and Microsoft would not be able to tell, no matter how often it phones home.
What? Apple is no better because the MS Office Lic applies equally to PC or Mac hardware? The problem is the license, nothing to do with the hardware.
In fact my $20 upgrade to Mountain Lion travels with my Apple ID. I sold an older MacBook and bought a new(er) one that had Lion on it. After I signed into the AppStore my Mountain Lion install worked fine...
Or the $20 Pages or $20 Numbers applications I bought.. once... that work on any Macs I own... at the same time.
Interesting and predictable discussion. As a Linux/Libre Office user, I totally get it that there are corporate workflows and many situations that simply require MS Office for compatibility, although I think with some redesign much of that could be eliminated (if there were a desire to do so; the amount of labor could easily swamp savings on software). The best situation would be to build your business from the ground up with FOSS products :) There would still be some compatibility problems with the outside world, but they could be minimized. I worked for a major government entity for years and managed not to use MS products, although at times it was a little awkward and honestly I can't claim to have saved money in my lonesome quest.
And I'll continue to use Libre Office :) No activation, no ribbon, works fine and does what I need.
Another nice drop-in replacement is Kingsoft Office, a pretty full MS office clone without all the post-2007 braindamage the Microsoft added. I've been installing it for friends and family who need to work with Office documents but don't (or can't) want to pay MS's Office price (don't even get me started about Office 365, from the folks who also brought you Win8). Oh, and the whole suite is a 39MB download, compared to a DVD's-worth for MS Office. Even if you want the full-on commercial version rather than the free one (which only adds VBA and macros) that's all of $49.95.
(Not affiliated with Kingsoft in any way, just happy to have something I can drop on people's machines when they need to occasionally work with Office documents).
IMO, MS is not a software company. It is an abuse company that uses selling software as a way of delivering abuse.
You prefer boxes with symbols instead of an alphabetical list?
Lets see, number of menu options in Word 2003 top menu:
File, Edit, View, Insert, Format, Table, Window, Help
Number of tabs to open new ribbons in Office 2013:
File, Home, Insert, Page Layout, References, Mailings, Review, View. Of course there is still the Help button cleverly hidden in the upper right corner.
How is this helping again? Oh, right! The tools we commonly use are on the 'Home' ribbon... where more than half of the UI is taken up by 'Styles'
The ribbon is not only one of the shitty things Microsoft has made, it's easily in the top 5 along with the Windows Registry, and Clippy.
I'm not sure how true the summary is tbh.
I bought Office 2013 Pro Plus through my university's website and it said it was quite clearly licensed for a maximum of 2 machines at once.
That implies that at very least the license can work on two computers and I honestly don't think there's anything magical about the copy and license I purchased even if I did get a student discount (there are perks to remaining a student for life, even alongside working full time!) - certainly the media I received looks like any other copy of Pro Plus and there is no mention of "Super special student offer that magically allows you to run it on two machines at once" though that doesn't of course mean that there aren't regional/license differences - perhaps bundled OEM copies with new machines have the restriction mentioned in TFA rather than retail versions which I presumably received?
Further, the wording "maximum of two at once" almost seems to imply that you can change the machine it's on, just as long as you don't exceed the maximum.
But in my case I was actually pleased to see Microsoft had explicitly decided to authorise you running one copy on multiple machines, if anything this is a step forward - an explicit recognition from Microsoft that people do have multiple machines and expect to not buy a copy per machine, and expect their license to work on multiple computers as mine does.
The LibreOffice interface is the same as the Office 97/2000/XP/2003 interface. Icons might be slightly different, text labels may not be identical ("Insert Picture" instead of "Insert Image" etc), but still more than identifiable to all but the most technologically inept ( HR, typically ).
Problems arise when you're a power user of these products; The 0.1% who actually use those deep-down-and-buried features which the rest of us don't even know exists. LibreOffice is great for the 99.9% of us who write essays for college, or letters to mom, but it lacks where those in industry need it to shine most.
Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/
I mean, 1) you're going to spend so much time in the VM, you might as well stay in, and 2) you've done the work of making your system easy to restore to get around reinstalling Office, why not take advantage and make all your software as easy to restore?
My boss is a bit of a mac fan, and osx has been breeding at various high levels, so I ended up with a 27" imac as my own machine to replace my old q6600-based pc, theoretically so I could get more familiar with OSX and support it better. The biggest issue I've found with running windows virtualised is disk i/o making it feel sluggish - swapping out the mechanical drive for a 256MB SSD solved that one.
So I run two worlds, side by side. I have a full screen windows VM with all my active directory management tools, plus vsphere console to manage the tin boxes running esx with most of our servers on, rdp for management of windows app servers, plus office 2010 and various other windows specific apps. In the other world of OSX, I keep my email, primary browser, tabbed iterm windows for ssh/mosh into our linux servers as needed, and sublime text, github client (and a terminal) for the in-house web app coding I'm doing as a side project.
I'm currently using vmware fusion; I was using parallels which was marginally faster, but it didn't like the combination of mountain lion, two displays, and windows vm fullscreen across both in it's own fullscreen space when I upgraded to ML. They may have finally fixed it by now, but fusion works, so I don't really care.
I probably spend about 60-70% of my time in virtual windows, but have mapped the mouse thumb buttons for switching back and forth easily. There's no reason I couldn't spend all my time there, and one of my colleagues who ended up in the same boat as me does exactly that, as he pretty much hates OSX but still has to go into sometimes, and running a windows vm fullscreen is easier than bootcamp.
Doing all that just because microsoft licencing blows on 2013 though? Just stick with an earlier version of office, it's not like the feature set has changed very much...
Remember kids, it's all fun and games until someone commits wholesale galactic genocide.
and that's exactly the reason I don't send docs in Office format, instead I use PDF.
That's fine until someone says you have to submit docs in Office format or you won't get the job/contract/new kidney for your child.
The fact that it's wrong doesn't mean you won't suffer by not playing by their rules.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
And further, people upgrade machines. People replace motherboards... or entire computers. They shouldn't have to repurchase software.
To avoid license breaches, I even run older versions of MS Office on my less important machines. I run a two-version-old version on my netbook as it is more than adequate for the airplane-based Word document editing and the PowerPoint presentations I use in my seminars.
Still, I'm starting to think that migrating to using LibreOffice might be the safest approach since I can guarantee being able to legally use it on all of my machines without having to reduce my entertainment budget to compensate.