The day Microsoft introduced Office 2013 and Office 365 products, the licensing and transferability mingling is confusing the common users. The questions which arise in the minds of customers before the purchase or during the installing of these software on another PC include:
- On how many PCs can I install Office 2013 & 385?
- Can I transfer it from my one PC to another, like from laptop to desktop?
- What will happen if my current computer is dead?
To answer all these questions, Redmond based company posted a simple chart. Just look at it.
The first we talk about Office 2013. All variants of Office 2013 install on only one PC and they are non-transferable. What it means is that you install it on one machine and then forget. If anything goes wrong to your PC, though you can reinstall it but you can not use it on any other PC. There is no option to remove the licensing agreement from that PC and transfer it to another. So it means if your PC is dead, your office 2013 is also expired.
There is only one situation in which you have the option to transfer it and that is if the host PC fails under warranty. In this case you can contact MS Support centre to get help.
The other option which is subscription based is Office 365. Here as you know “365” means you can get its subscription for a whole year (365 days) with the price tag of $99.99. This option is little flexible. One subscription can be used to install Office 365 on 5 computers (including PCs, Macs or select mobiles and tablets). Moreover, it’s also transferable. You can remove one PC from the subscription list and include another one, but you can not use more than 5 host machines at the same time.
After reading above clarification, many users will ask which option will suite them best.
It all depends on need, requirement and future planning. If you own 3-5 PC and you have to use Office on all of them, you should go for Office 365. If you are also planning to replace your existing system with new and upgraded one, again Office 365 is best for you.
However, in the case you use Office product only on one PC and you don’t have any plan to replace it within next 2-3 years, you should go for Office 2013. By the way if I have to pick, I’d go with subscription based option. What’s your choice?
Is it a good move from MS or bad??