Microsoft Office 2013: one license for one machine.
Many of us who buy a new computer go through the ritual of looking for installation disks or downloading installers for the programs we have been using on the older machine. However, there is one major software title that cannot go through re-installation: Microsoft Office 2013. Looks like Microsoft isn’t as generous as we thought with this particular release.
Unlike Microsoft Office 365, which offers single licensing for up to five machines, the Microsoft Office 2013 license only works on one machine, no matter what. Woody Leonhard from InfoWorld and Adam Turner from The Age took their time to review and look through the details of Microsoft’s (MSFT) latest Office licensing terms and discovered that Office users can get “a perpetual license for the Office 2013 programs” that covers only one computer. This is a bit worrying because basically, if your PC crashes and you need to buy a new one, you may not be able to transfer your Office 2013 license to your new machine. Forking out that extra money for new license seems to be the only solution for now.
According to Turner, Microsoft seems to be more rigid in their terms of service that is normally reserved for OEM-included software sold to individual users. Turner was also informed by a Microsoft spokesperson that a “perpetual license of Office 2013 can only be installed on one personal computer,” meaning “that the customer can only install it on one device, either a desktop or laptop, but not both. If the customer has a system crash, they are allowed to reinstall Office on that same computer. If there are problems with this process, customers can contact Microsoft technical support.”
These new licensing restrictions also apply to retail copies Office Home & Business 2013 and Professional 2013. According to Silverman, Microsoft is driving consumers to its subscription-based Office 365 product, which allows an installation on up to 5 different computers and requires you to pay an annual fee of $99. Given that the least expensive version of traditional Office 2013 starts at $140 and can only be installed on one computer forever, $99 a year for 5 systems starts to look like a pretty good deal.
Source: BGR
Image Credit: PC Mag
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