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Windows and Office make up the lion’s share of Microsoft’s revenues, so when everybody’s favorite “devices and services” company makes decisions that fundamentally alter its business model, people stop and take notice. Changes to Office 2013’s licensing terms might not sound all that interesting at first glance, however, they almost certainly hint at the future Microsoft is preparing for.
If you picked up a copy of Office 2010 Home & Student, you were granted three separate installation licenses, and transferring these to a new PC was a fairly trivial matter. Fast forward to 2013 and the latest stand-alone version of Office doesn’t just restrict you to one PC, but the license also strictly prohibit you from transferring that copy to any new device in the future. In short Microsoft is doing everything possible to convince you that the way it has done business in the past is no longer modern, and is hoping consumer’s en-mass will embrace subscriptions instead.
Office 365 Home Premium subscriptions offer up to 5 separate installations for $10 per month or $99 per year. The equivalent Office stand-alone version comes in at $519 for a single install, and the least expensive Home and Student edition comes in at $139 that again can never be installed on more than one PC. Microsoft has made its subscription based offerings sound like an incredible deal, but it has done so at the expense of what we have come to expect from its traditional retail offerings in the past.
Would you consider paying Microsoft an annual fee to use Windows? It could very well come to that by the time Windows 9 ships.
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davelray
February 18, 2013 at 6:20am
Doubt it. Microsoft doesn't make their money on Office from the consumer market. They make it from the Enterprise/Business market. They always have. Funny thing is, most large businesses offer Office through the Home Use Program for $9.99. That's how I get my copy. And most colleges and universities have similiar deals for 10 bucks or even free in some cases. The 3 license pack of Home and Student was unnecessary from the get go. They started to change that with Office 2010. And in years past it was Student and Teacher edition and before you could purchase it, you were supposed to show your school ID to prove you qualified. But as most retail stores didn't bother checking, Microsoft dropped that requirement and changed the name. In the long run this will gives people more options. I'd much rather pay $100 a year to use Office than to use LibreOffice or OpenOffice for free.
