MSOffice 2013 EULA ties license to one assembly forever?

[PainMike]

http://www.computerworld.com/s/artic...8&pageNumber=1

Could not decide if should be in News forum, but rather writer-specific. Also could be joined to LibreOffice thread below.

[GlenBarrington]

It's kind of sneaky for Microsoft to kind of hide the fact that they are changing the terms of use in that way. I think they don't really understand that Word processing and office suites, in general, have become a commodity product.

Effective and cheaper alternatives exist to MS Office. 5 years ago, those alternatives WEREN'T as good as Office; now, it's getting harder and harder to justify the ongoing expense of a high end office suite.

The added value just isn't there the way it used to be.

[GeoffC]

sheesh ! That'll upset a lot of professional businesses !

MS are doing all they can to alienate folk even more than they already do! I'm surprised at the large number of companies I've seen who still use WinXP ....

[VydorScope]

This is key...

The change to the perpetually licensed, retail copies of Office 2013 is another stick, the experts said. "Through licensing, Microsoft is pushing technology in the direction they want to go," said Ullman. "And they're definitely pushing customers to Office 365."

MS does not want to sell software anymore, only services. I do not think it is a wise move, but it is the filter which you need to run everything you see them do through. Then things make sense...sorta.

[Asawi]

Bye bye Microsoft Office, hello Open Office!

[David Marseilles]

Goodbye MS Office 2013, Hello Office 2010!

OneNote is tough to replace, especially since the stuff I love about it is not the most popular stuff. If I ever win the lottery, I'll commission a software package to my liking, because MS rarely changes in a direction that makes me like them more -- and I especially hate subscriptions.

[PainMike]

Originally Posted by David Marseilles

Goodbye MS Office 2013, Hello Office 2010!

OneNote is tough to replace, especially since the stuff I love about it is not the most popular stuff. If I ever win the lottery, I'll commission a software package to my liking, because MS rarely changes in a direction that makes me like them more -- and I especially hate subscriptions.

OneNote is one handy part at work where I use it, say, in mail context with meeting agendas and minutes, similarly a working sharePoint environment with MSOffice has its potential etc.
But as a home user, I'm just keeping eye on the advance of OpenStuff capabilities with common file formats without need to spin MS cobweb around them all the time.

[GlenBarrington]

is Zim Desktop Wiki.

While it is not quite the same thing, and the search capabilities could be better, I think a lot of people will find it can work for them. If you are a light duty/casual user of OneNote and you find it hard to justify the purchase price, you might find ZDW an acceptable compromise.

[carld]

Originally Posted by Asawi

Bye bye Microsoft Office, hello Open Office!

I finally got fed up with MS's unusable ribbon and switched to Open Office a couple of months ago, then I was given a free upgrade from Office 2007 to Office 2010. Surprisingly, or maybe not, it looks like the UI has gotten even worse.

[exscentric]

I read on another forum that a man that sets puters up for customers called MS and talked to a license specialist and they told him you could move it to a new computer if the old one was damaged etc. but that you would have to call in to MS to do it.

However another wrote that the EULA did not read that way so time may tell slightly different than now.

" it looks like the UI has gotten even worse." It makes things harder to get around and it seems their developers are of a totally different mind set than their customers.

Windows 8 indicates the same thinking and mind set that they have.

[Ralph Sir Edward]

here's to Word 97....

[Ralph Sir Edward]

And by the by, once you've activated a Windows XP on at virtual machine, the machine can be moved around to your heart's content on any sort of virtual machine software...

[VydorScope]

One note is great... but Evernote is nice too, just a suggestion.

[David Marseilles]

I was with OOO for years before I got a great deal on Office 2010, but I never stopped using Onenote. It's worth twice the price to me. I mostly keep my eye on alternatives so I don't have to put up with MS dictating to me what I do and don't need. They get all obsessed about making a notes product that fits inside their package instead of just making a great notes product, thus making it unnecessarily hard to make very basic formatting decisions (paragraph spacing) inside onenote because they don't want it to step on Word's toes.

Evernote is nice, and that's the feature set that's easier to find, especially on mobile/web. Cloud notes, web clipping, all the stuff that doesn't interest me much. My wants are pretty basic, and I keep thinking I really should learn enough of a portable language to maintain them myself.

[VydorScope]

Oh, there is no question that OneNote is a great product, but have Mac's so it is not an option for me. EverNote is closest I have found.