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Microsoft Restores Transfer Rights To Office 2013
New submitter gewalker writes "Bowing to significant unfriendly customer feedback regarding its new 'no transfer' license for Office 2013, Microsoft has reconsidered and will now allow Office 2013 licenses to be transferred between computers. Actual license language will not be reflected for a few months for shipped products, but Microsoft will allow transfer of license effective immediately. Calls to customer support will be necessary, as the activation servers won't be updated for a few months."
This is a step in the right direction. Now if only unfriendly customer feedback would get them to retract Metro we'll really be in business.
Seriously though, how obvious was it that there would be a huge negative reaction to the change of licensing terms for Office? As usually, the more MBA's you get involved in things the dumber the collective IQ of an organization gets.
Trying to chip away customers rights at every chance and backing away only when the blowback gets unbearable, just to wait for another chance.
Maybe more rational thinking is returning to the Big M.
Now, if only they would rethink the Windows 8 mess on desktops.
I bought some tires for my car and they came with locking lug-nuts. The lug-nuts are weird in that, once fastened, nobody can undo them except for the tire manufacturer. If I want to use the tires on another car, I have to call them and they will allow me to move the tires to a different vehicle.
And I would choose to buy these tires why?
A few MONTHS for a simple business-rule change?
Now you've used up your post license for this thread. To post again, you will have to buy another.
Your political party doesn't care about your rights and only represents corporate interests.
I applaud the change itself, but stretching the timeframe to actually having a good system implemented will do Microsoft no good. I hope they're okay with rampant piracy, since it will be more convenient to just pirate a new copy of Office 2013, rather than fumble around with Microsoft's customer support for a day while they double check my name, phone number, social security number, hair color, and genome sequence to make absolutely sure I really am the same one who bought that license in the first place.
It does look like this was just a "feeler" but indicates the direction MS wants to take wrt to software licensing.
Views expressed do not necessarily reflect those of the author.
They tried to make MS office 2013 a rental rather than a purchase - and by doing that they make an office365 rental a psychologically easier next step for ordinary users.
If they had gotten away with it then all they would have done is driven people to libreoffice (and by people I mean average people, not corporate or SOHOs) - as an average person is not interested in home computing becoming a rental experience. MS need to accept that, even if they donâ(TM)t like it.
There is still the unresolved question of what happens if MS disappears in 15 years time and I want to install a copy of office 2013 that I bought. Does whoever buys the assets of MS just say "tough, get lost and buy something new", do they say "ok we will activate it, but pay us a $20 handling fee", or do they say "sure, no problem".
It's like how Colin Chapman designed car frames: keep taking out pieces until it collapses under its own weight. Put the last piece back in. Do something outrageous and walk it back just one step, getting almost all of what you wanted.
Simple Business Sociopathy 101.
i dont' know... office 2007 was 10x better than office 2003. 2010 wasn't that big of an improvement over 2007, but brought some nice features. i'm not sure what they can do with 2013, but I'm curious to find out!
No. Microsoft doesn't give a rat's ass about negative customer feedback. The only reason they changed their tune on license transfer of Office 2013, is that the EU has fined them over half a billion, reminding MS that someone is watching. Someone with a big, scary stick.
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
That still doesn't make Office a good buy. I'd still rather download Libre Office and get going now for free.
...can someone explain that post using a computer analogy?
Koans and fables for the software engineer
Then the question becomes: why would i take windows 8?
To get the free copy of Office, of course. Duh!
Peter predicted that you would "deliberately forget" creation 2000 years ago...
There are a handful of neat new features, but one of the big ones that impressed me is that Word (and possibly others?) can now import PDFs, as well as export them. The conversion isn't guaranteed to be perfect, but it does pretty well even on very complex documents (though the process may take some time), and on simple ones I can't tell the difference.
There's no place I could be, since I've found Serenity...
can you finally open two excel documents in separate windows? this has been possible with word for a long time, ppt too i think. this would be a killer feature finally!!!!!1!
Too many companies just refuse to "get it". Fifteen, heck even 10, years ago you could screw with customers, they'd write in, and that would be the end of it. You may or may not do anything different. But this is a vastly different world now and companies just don't understand that! It use to be that 1 happy customer might tell 3 friends. An unhappy customer would tell 10 friends. But with the internet and social media, 1 happy customer can tell 20 friends, but 1 hacked off customer can tell thousands in an instant! It was one thing if you got 10 letters back in the day, waaay different if you hear thousands of customers ripping on you in hours. And tech companies seem oblivious to the fact that when it comes to technology in today's world, customers often have free or less expensive alternatives that are, fairly often, pretty equal in quality or features.