In a twitter reply by Microsoft Australia (MSAU) today, we were reminded of a Microsoft Office license term that many people aren’t aware of. The reply to a tweeted question stated that whilst the Home and Student edition of Microsoft Office is licensed for installation on up to three machines, all other versions of Microsoft Office are in fact licensed for installation on two machines. Specifically, the license terms state:
The theory behind this not well-publicized license term is that many of today’s computer-users have both a desktop and a notebook (or other portable device), and thus it would be unjust for Microsoft to try to charge these users for both machines. Of course, a possible second reason for this license term is that more machines with Microsoft’s Office installed equals less machines with competing productivity suites installed – and even if users aren’t paying for both copies, that’s still a win for Microsoft.
This license term applies to all Microsoft Office retail products, including the Academic editions.
Amendment: As iKenndac pointed out in the comments below, other productivity suites may have similar license terms (ie. Adobe products), so be sure to always check your license terms before shelling out for extra copies.
Microsoft’s next big version of its office suite officially goes on sale today in retail stores across the world. The highly anticipated release of Office 2010 has been through months of beta testing since November of last year. TechNet and MSDN subscribers were the first to get Office 2010 back in April this year.
What’s new
With the new edition of Office, came numerous changes to the UI, applications and even x64 support. Throughout all the applications in the Office 2010 suite the ribbon is used, offering its users a similar experience at the top of the screen. The customizable ribbon lets you quickly access important tools and features for getting your Word, Excel, PowerPoint and other applications looking just right.
64-bit support
This is the first time Microsoft has made Office available in an x64-edition. The 64-bit edition only runs on x64 machines running Windows Vista or Windows 7 64-bit, which takes advantage of your processors speed. Office 2010 really does utilize your 64-bit processor, launching applications faster and being able to work with larger amounts of data in Excel 2010.
Editions
Much like the Windows operating system, Office 2010 comes in many different flavours for you to choose from. The editions start from the Starter Edition, giving you basic support in Word and Excel, but includes advertisements – and is completely free. And working all the way up to the Professional Plus, offering you every thing that the Office suite has (excluding Visio and Project 2010), which includes Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, Outlook, Publisher, Access, Communicator, InfoPath and SharePoint Workspace (Groove).
Upgradeable
Much like Windows 7, Office 2010 gives you the ability to upgrade at any-time from a lower version of the suite, up to Professional Plus. Consumers can purchase the Home and Student edition, which gives you Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote and if they require Outlook, they can upgrade to Home and Business within Office 2010.
Web Apps
Not only can you work on your desktop or laptop, but now you can have friends (who don’t even need Office 2010 installed) to collaborate with you over the Internet. You can share your PowerPoint presentation with your friend and have him help edit your work on the fly. With Web Apps, you can share any document from Office 2010 with your friends and family, while they help you out.
Mobile Office 2010
The release co-incides with today’s Office 2010 launch. The new Office suite is made for Windows Mobile 6.5. A different version of Office Mobile will ship with Windows Phone 7 later this year.
Mac Edition (Office 2011)
Microsoft also promised to deliver a full version of Outlook in the Mac 2011 version. The full version of Outlook for Mac will include .PST file importing, Time Machine and Spotlight support. Users who are already familiar with Outlook for Windows should be comfortable with the Mac release. However, Office Mac 2011 will only be available in 32-bit.
Anyone keeping up with Microsoft Office news in the past year knows about Office Web Apps. With Office 2010, Microsoft has promised the world a free version of its world dominating office productivity suite via the web browser. Unlike traditional versions of Office, Web Apps will live in the cloud and have limited functionality. As of yesterday, the new service has gone live to the public.
On the Windows Team Blog, Microsoft has officially launched Web Apps for everyone in the US, UK, Canada, and Ireland. It is also accessible to other countries as well, just not yet in their native language. Web Apps is built around your personal SkyDrive, which gives you 25 GB of free online storage space for all of your documenting needs. With the desktop version of Office 2010, documents can also be saved to your SkyDrive, then revisited and shared online through your web browser. This makes accessing your personal files on-the-go a cinch. Web Apps also allows multiple people to collaborate on a single document simultaneously, while still maintaining a version history in case you ever need to go back in time. You can even view your saved documents on most smartphones.
At office.live.com, you are greeted with your typical Windows Live ID login screen. Once inside, you will see the ability to create Word documents, Excel spreadsheets, PowerPoint presentations, or OneNote notes. You can also upload existing files from your PC, making the move to SkyDrive an easy one. If using a Silverlight enabled browser, you will gain the additional ease of dragging and dropping your files directly from your PC into SkyDrive.
Microsoft is planning to offer PC manufacturers $2 per copy of Microsoft Office Starter 2010, if they pre-install the Bing bar and Windows Live Essentials, according to ZDnet.
PC makers can also opt to not install the Bing bar and Windows Live Essentials, but will pay $5 per copy of Microsoft Office Starter 2010. A significant price difference when PC makers are purchasing licenses in very large quantities.
Microsoft strategy is to get their Bing search engine and other Windows tools, found in Windows Live Essentials like Movie Maker, Live messenger, Mail, Writer, etc onto PCs, increasing their marketshare for their products. The installation will also set the default search engine on the users browser to Bing, and MSN as their homepage.
Note the acryonom use, OPC is OEM Partner Central, H&S is Home and Student, H&B is Home and Business, Pro is Professional. OPK is OEM Preinstallation Kit, the Office single image that OEM manufactures use to pre-load Office 2010 onto new PCs.
Microsoft will also be releasing Microsoft Office 2010 single-license key cards, which won’t actually contain any data on them, other than a serial key. These key cards will be available in major retail stores, which will active Office 2010 on customers PCs. Microsoft Office Starter 2010 comes with an ad-based version of Word and Excel, with limited functionality. Users can unlock their copy of Office at any time.
