Microsoft: Just Kidding, You Can Transfer Licenses For Your Retail Versions Of Office
from the the-customer-is-always-right dept
A few weeks back, I wrote a piece about how Microsoft was changing the licensing terms for the retail versions of its Office product so that it would be a single install license. As I mentioned in that piece, this seemed like a pretty clear attempt to get retail customers to move to MIcrosoft's Office 365 line, requiring an ongoing subscription. Otherwise, retail customers would be beholden to their PCs, left to buy a new copy of Office should that machine no longer function (especially so if that machine wasn't under warranty). Customers, to put it mildly, were not impressed.
And it was that customer feedback that has apparently prompted Microsoft to revert the Office 2013 retail products back to the traditional, transferable licensing arrangement.
Based on customer feedback we have changed the Office 2013 retail license agreement to allow customers to transfer the software from one computer to another. This means customers can transfer Office 2013 to a different computer if their device fails or they get a new one. Previously, customers could only transfer their Office 2013 software to a new device if their PC failed under warranty.While it's nice that Microsoft ended up listening to their customers, some folks are noting that these sneaky kinds of licensing attempts are nothing new for the company.
By the way, if all this seems familiar, it’s not your imagination. Microsoft tried a similar tactic with Windows Vista in October 2006. The original license agreement imposed a new limit of one transfer on retail copies of Windows. At the time, I called it “a sneaky change in Windows licensing terms.” After a similar outcry from Microsoft customers (a Microsoft executive acknowledged having received "lots of e-mail and other feedback" on this issue), Microsoft rolled back the changes and restored the original license terms less than a month later.This trend should be a lesson to Microsoft, as well as other technology companies. If you want to get customers to adopt a certain product line you have, do it by making that product more valuable, rather than by reducing the value of a competing product.
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Filed Under: backtracking, licenses, microsoft office
Companies: microsoft
Reader Comments
The First Word
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Seriously, what is it with companies who keep insisting these changes are "good" for everyone?
Word of advice, tech companies: different people use their systems for different needs.
Please stop trying to put us all under the same umbrella.
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See: The absolute insanity of the Linux desktop in the last five years, where long-standing paradigms for user interfaces are thrown away and replaced because of... reasons...
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By all means develop an interface that will work across phone and tablet devices but keep the desktop experience as a proper desktop experience.
One of the reasons I am now an Xfce user rather than Gnome.
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Interface choices
For all the faults of Windows 7 (a complete description of which would consume more storage than there is mass in the universe), it is at least usable (for very forgiving uses of the term) for several things at once, if given absurd quantities of resources.
I will push any device or system to the edge, but the previews of Windows 8 were so utterly useless that I actually gave up on it completely. I can get more productivity out of 3.1. Heck, I can get more productivity out of DOS 5.whatever and a copy of DESQview. I actually did that back in the day.
While they've given up this time, I expect that the issue of pay-us-forever will continue to to creep along until there is no pay-once software from Microsoft.
One of many reasons why I use Linux for most of my doings, and only use Windows (carefully locked away in virtual machines for my own system) for device synchronization or when people pay me to work with it.
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True. It's a current industry fad, and a particularly obnoxious one.
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Then how do you explain the popularity of VI, possibly the most unintuitive program ever written, among Unix users?
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That's an understatement. With most editing programs, you can at least type something without spending 30+ minutes reading the manual.
My only experience with VI comes from using a Unix shell account on a school computer. I ran VI and literally couldn't do anything with it. I read the Man page about how you need to toggle been text entry and edit mode, so I tried toggling it. I still couldn't do anything. Went back, read some more, tried it again, still couldn't get it to work. I'd assume that it was broken, but I don't see any reason why only VI would be broken when everything else worked fine.
Finally, I gave up and used some other, non-standard editor which probably had less features, but was 100% intuitive. Use the arrow keys to move, Delete & Backspace to remove characters, type to insert characters, most important commands listed at the bottom of the screen. I believe it's the same editor that's included in Pine.
You have to remember most Unix programmers are used to doing stuff via "command line". By integrating that into VI, you can navigate text files and make changes without ever having your hands leave the keyboard.
I thought it was just the Unix philosophy of never making things easy for the user.
Back when I was using the shell account, I tried using RN to read the Usenet newsgroups. Talk about another pain in the ass program. Although it wasn't as bad as VI, it was anything but user friendly. I think I ended up using Tin instead.
Or the options when compiling a file.
"Enabling this option will disable the option to enable the disabling of that particular function. This option can be overridden with a setting in the user's config file. The config file settings can overridden by a command line parameter at run-time, unless this option has been overridden by a global config file."
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Even if the change is objectively for the better, the amount of benefit must outweigh the cost.
In the case of Metro running on the desktop, there is little to no benefit, and there is a huge cost -- so it's bad design in that use case.
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Indeed it is.
Windows 8 is faster, it's true, but for most people, that's not a big deal. They'll never notice. A bigger deal is when the UI sucks.
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See as much as everyone who has had the misfortune (or in my case need to test) the Windows 8 Desktop. It doesn't matter that it is hated, because it will, eventually be accepted, and that will make it the OS of choice for both phone and tablet, which are markets M$ has been un-successful in for years. There goal by integrating Windows 8 on the desktop is to steer people to Surface tablets and Windows phones.
The theory is sooner or later corporate America will have to upgrade to Windows 8, schools will use it, it will come on all new computers... Everyone will know Windows 8 and thus choose what they know over Android or Apple.
The problems with their plan, at least as I see it, is that different devices, with different usages NEEDS different Interfaces. I also find the Windows 8 Metro interface annoyingly blocky and bright. The other issue is it may be too late, too many people may have already left for Android or iOS, and they may not come back, as they would have to repurchase apps...
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I think that is a poor choice, but it is obvious M$ does not, they bet the farm on it.
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I'd like mine to be smudge-less.
MS recently buy a monitor screen wipes company?
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Of course all modern Microsoft products use Product Activation, and thus one can never really count on being able to transfer it to a new PC later on (as the activation servers will undoubtedly be deactivated at some point down the line once official product support is ended).
People should just use GNU/Linux and Libreoffice and then they wouldn't have to worry...
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I've salvaged many windows stickers off OEM machines and used the license on home-builts or repairs.
At worst the license would come up as invalid you call a 1800 number and tell them you had to replace the mobo and they give you a code to bypass the invalid key screen. And that was only a fraction of the time, usually it just worked.
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Dinosaur Microsoft! Still selling "infinite goods" at high prices!
How do you kids manage to maintain your notions with the Microsoft monster as everyday counter-example?
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To this day Microsoft is the default operating system for desktops because of piracy back then. Everybody knows Windows because everyone before them knew Windows. It's still pirated massively despite the dumb ass activation, yet Microsoft is still #1.
If you were correct, Microsoft would have been long dead since piracy of Windows started when they were the underdog.
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Replaced the motherboard and windows didn't allow me to use the three pack for the fixed computer.
Went online found a copy of windows 7 used the daz or pez loader and now it works.
Until something better than windows 7 comes along and GNU/Linux is getting close.
Haven't used microsoft office in 3 years use open office now.
Have no use for ms office when open office does the job.
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Office 365
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Friendship is forever.
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About this post
exactly Need to my site. You can visit my site and say how my site look like.
after watching your tutorial.
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Stick to the old version MS Office
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