I installed Office 04 on 2 Macs: mine and my mom’s. Nothing says you can’t do that.
So my mom comes over to work on a project we’re doing, and we’re both using the same AirPort for internet. Meanwhile, I’m using Excel and she tries to boot up Word. And gets a fucking piece of shit error message saying “Too many computers are using this copy of Office. Word will now shut down.”
Also, if you purchased your Mac within the last two or three years, you’ve got a quite decent word processor right on it, part iLife, which, while not as feature-laden as Word, still does the job for most purposes, and has good interoperability, such that the kinds of formatting tricks most people utilize (various fonts and text styles, changes in margins, indentation, justification, etc.) are preserved quite seamlessly when opening and editing the file in one or other suite.
I read something else. I dunno what. Getting Started Guide or some such shit. It said you can install on a second device. Didn’t say jack about the exclusive use of the primary user. So I installed it.
Fuck these people and their confiscatory weenie money-grubbing licensing agreements anyway. This sort of shit ought to be illegal.
WAAAAAAAH yourself, Donor. Jam it past your Uvula.
I just want to be able to do with Office 04 what I did with past versions that didn’t pull this shit. Funny how the bigger the company gets, the more of your bucks it wants.
In all fairness to MS, most commercial sw licenses from most vendors says you need to buy a separate seat to run it on different computers. A few allow you to install to a laptop and a desktop as long as you don’t run them concurrently.
I appreciate your willingness to set the record straight. However, I am only an anarcho-whatsit in regards to giant cutthroat conglomerates. Your women and children are perfectly safe. Well, your children anyway.
One license of Office, at most, allows you to run it on one computer at a time. This has always been Microsoft’s policy (although there are some special exceptions, like for the academic edition). They make the software, they get to set the rules under which you use it.
This is not illegal, nor is it even unethical. Microsoft decided that one license of Office costs $X. If you want to run it on multiple computers, this means they want you to pay $2X. You may think that’s exorbitant (I do), but if so, you’re free to simply not use Office. No one’s forcing you - there are plenty of alternatives available.
Really, if anyone’s in the wrong here, it’s you, for (apparently) having been using Office on multiple computers without paying for it for years.
I dislike Microsoft quite a bit, but I respect their right to set the price of their software.
