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Does your copy of Office 2013 die with your computer?

theage.com.au

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Re: Does your copy of Office 2013 die with your computer?

#2
What seems bizarre about this is that the licensed software market seems to be moving full-speed towards app stores with one-off fees, perpetual licenses and broad usage rights across a customer's devices. But with Office 2013 Microsoft seems to be stuck with a strategy from about 5 years ago.

Interesting data point that illustrates their confusion. On iOS the operating system can render Office documents for you with no additional software. On a clean install of Linux you can usually render and edit Office documents (using Libreoffice or OpenOffice). I imagine the situation is similar on Mac OS X and Android.

On a clean install of Windows 8 there is no software pre-installed that will render Office documents. Worse, if you click on a .doc file the operating system helpfully suggests that you can look for an app to open the file in the Store. The top match for opening .doc files in the Windows 8 app Store at the moment? Corel Office!

Re: Does your copy of Office 2013 die with your computer?

#5
post #2

What seems bizarre about this is that the licensed software market seems to be moving full-speed towards app stores with one-off fees, perpetual licenses and broad usage rights across a customer's devices. But with Office 2013 Microsoft seems to be stuck with a strategy from about 5 years ago. Interesting data point that illustrates their confusion. On iOS the operating system can render Office documents for you with…

Microsoft does supply a full suite of viewer software

http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/downloads/office-online-fi...

Your point is well taken, though, that the experience is generally inferior to other operating systems out of the box.

Re: Does your copy of Office 2013 die with your computer?

#6
This is why I hate DRM. I want to be able to use my software forever.

If it's technically and culturally capable of doing so, the manufacturer has an economic incentive to want the software to die with your computer: That'll put you in the market for either another copy, or one of their newer products, every few years. Even if you were perfectly happy with the old version and upgraded your computer for other reasons.

Re: Does your copy of Office 2013 die with your computer?

#7
post #4

I suppose its a vaguely interesting technical point regarding terms and conditions, but in reality people will just go ahead and reinstall it anyway - with no penalty. I don't really see how this EULA change actually changes anything in practice.

Is that possible? I'm not the software will allow it. The OEM version phones home with your license key during install.

Re: Does your copy of Office 2013 die with your computer?

#8
post #2

What seems bizarre about this is that the licensed software market seems to be moving full-speed towards app stores with one-off fees, perpetual licenses and broad usage rights across a customer's devices. But with Office 2013 Microsoft seems to be stuck with a strategy from about 5 years ago. Interesting data point that illustrates their confusion. On iOS the operating system can render Office documents for you with…

You made me briefly imagine an 'excel app' with a 10 hour download from an app store. Don't make me do that again. I'm still recovering.

Re: Does your copy of Office 2013 die with your computer?

#9
post #2

What seems bizarre about this is that the licensed software market seems to be moving full-speed towards app stores with one-off fees, perpetual licenses and broad usage rights across a customer's devices. But with Office 2013 Microsoft seems to be stuck with a strategy from about 5 years ago. Interesting data point that illustrates their confusion. On iOS the operating system can render Office documents for you with…

.doc is a legacy format as far as modern Office is concerned (.docx is its native format). Not that this makes your example any less goofy, but it probably explains why Office 2013 isn't considered the top match for .doc files.

Re: Does your copy of Office 2013 die with your computer?

#10
I will say that Office 2010 OEM licenses were a pretty good deal IMHO. Yes, you could only install them once... but they were close to half the price of a retail version. At least for me, it worked out to be cheaper to just bite the bullet and buy another license in the case of catastrophic hardware failure or major hardware upgrade.

Looks like the pricing is more confusing (and higher) for 2013 though.

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