Are you planning to use a new Microsoft Surface for business? You might want to think again, at least if you are concerned about legal niceties.
At ZDnet, Windows guru Ed Bott examines the strangely complex legalities of using Microsoft Office on Surface. Office 2013–at least its Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote applications–is part of the Surface’s Windows RT operating sustem. But the bundled software, Office Home & Student 2013 RT, prohibits use of the programs “for any non-profit, commercial, or other revenue-generating activity.” Which seems to mean that if I were writing this in Word on a surface, I would be violating the license.
It’s not as though you have a choice about the version of Office on your Surface. Office RT comes with it and is the only version that can be installed. (The forthcoming Surface Pro will support any Windows version of Office, but probably does not come with any Office software included.)
There are several ways out of this. If the Surface is owner by a company and if the company has an Office Volume License Agreement, the restrictions are waived. Same if you subscribe to a business version of Microsoft’s forthcoming Office 365 service, $150 a year for Small Business Premium, $20 per user per month for Office Professional Plus.
Bott says you are probably also in the clear if you own a fully licensed version of Office 2013 Professional and maybe Office 2013 Home & Student, although those products won’t ship for a couple of months.
Pages, Numbers, and Keynote aren’t the greatest word processor, spreadsheet, and presentation software in the world. But at least if you buy these iPad apps, for $10 apiece, you can use them for whatever you damn well please.
How is it that supposedly the most strategic advantage of the Surface device (Office) over other tablets, has to be included for free?
Think about it.
MS is stuck between the rock of Apple’s low cost app pricing model ($9.99 for Pages) and the hard place of competing with Apple’s hardware pricing and 100s of millions of Android/Apple mobile users who’ve done perfectly well without Office for several years now.
Between the hardware issues and the software issues, the Surface is a strange tablet, laptop, or whatever. I’m pretty much in agreement with Tech.pinions that the Surface tries to be too many things at once. I had one but the wheels came off.
Most business users are already covered under volume licences – this is not an issue. But you can make it one if you need some page clicks to generate revenue from google ads.
Most enterprises are covered by VLAs; small businesses generally are not. (I know that volume licensing is a misnomer and that you can, in fact. get a VLA for a single license. But that isn’t how most really small businesses get their software.) Neither are individuals who are bringing their own devices to work, because (I believe at least; I haven’t read the full license) that the VLA license only applies to hardware owned by the licensee. So it is a problem for a lot of users, who, I suspect, will simply ignore the license terms–if they know about them.
My point was that Microsoft licensing almost always makes things far, far harder than they have to be. Microsoft and its customers would both be better off if the company had fewer lawyers.
By the way, there was no call for that second sentence. I picked up the gist of this piece, with credit, from Ed Bott, who is generally very supportive of Microsoft. And, if you look even a little closely, you’ll notice there are no Google ads on these pages.
the reason apps became so popular was because the iphone and more so the ipad were/are basically useless and had many basic features missing, another reason we were jailbreaking our phones, on the surface apps are not that important especially since we basically have full control of the file system and more websites are now geared for mobile. why do I need a recipe app when I can just Bing what I want, ditto for news, videos and the list goes on. Most of the mission critical apps are already available for W8RT. As far as being hard to use, my 70 yr old mom have no issue, same as my iPad friendly wife and kids, btw the kids are hogging the Surface, which I don’t mind, the main reason for the purchase was to get the off the ipad, which I will craigslist in a few weeks. further more if you are going to use software to make money, just how you would like to get paid for your hard work, so would the people that developed office, think of Surface version of Office as Freemium offering, for home and school kids use it to your hearts content, if you want to use it to make money, don’t be a cheapo.
“why do I need a recipe app when I can just Bing what I want, ditto for news, videos and the list goes on.” – TD
You have it exactly backward, TD. The trend is in the other direction. Rather than Bing or Google for a result, people prefer apps. Apps are, in essence, a personalized web just for us, always accessible, right on our phone or tablet.
Apps just work better than web pages. HTML 5 is a huge improvement, but it still hasn’t closed the gap. If the browser solved all problems, why did iOS devices need apps? (I actually think apps were part of the Apple plan from the beginning; they weren’t included in the initial version of the iPhone because the infrastructure wasn’t ready. But I admit this is speculation.)
The people who developed Office do work for Microsoft, so their getting paid isn;t an issue. And my complaint isn;t so much that Microsoft wants Surface buyers to pay for commercial use of Office but that it has made doing so both quite expensive and needlessly complex. In essence, you have to pay for a full version of Office to use the limited version on RT legally.
This is my first time pay a quick visit at here and i am really happy to read everthing at one place
There is some nice and utilitarian information on this site.
Keep functioning ,splendid job!
There is definately a lot to find out about this subject. I like all the points you made
Thank you for another wonderful article. Where else could anyone get that kind of information in such an ideal way of writing? I have a presentation next week, and I’m on the look for such info.
Hello, you used to write magnificent, but the last few posts have been kinda boring?K I miss your tremendous writings. Past few posts are just a bit out of track! come on!
Hi! This is my first comment here so I just wanted to give a quick shout out and say I genuinely enjoy reading your blog posts. Can you suggest any other blogs/websites/forums that deal with the same topics? Thanks a lot!
My brother recommended I might like this blog. He was once totally right. This publish actually made my day. You cann’t imagine simply how so much time I had spent for this info! Thanks!
Some really superb posts on this web site, thanks for contribution. “Give me the splendid silent sun with all his beams full-dazzling.” by Walt Whitman.
Excellent read, I just passed this onto a colleague who was doing some research on that. And he actually bought me lunch since I found it for him smile Thus let me rephrase that: Thank you for lunch! “Not only is the universe stranger than we imagine, it is stranger than we can imagine.” by Sir Arthur Eddington.
I cling on to listening to the newscast talk about getting free online grant applications so I have been looking around for the most excellent site to get one. Could you advise me please, where could i find some?
A formidable share, I simply given this onto a colleague who was doing just a little analysis on this. And he actually purchased me breakfast as a result of I found it for him.. smile. So let me reword that: Thnx for the treat! But yeah Thnkx for spending the time to debate this, I really feel strongly about it and love studying more on this topic. If potential, as you become expertise, would you mind updating your blog with extra particulars? It’s extremely helpful for me. Massive thumb up for this blog publish!
Greetings! Very helpful advice on this article! It is the little changes that make the biggest changes. Thanks a lot for sharing!
There are some attention-grabbing closing dates on this article however I don’t know if I see all of them heart to heart. There is some validity however I’ll take hold opinion until I look into it further. Good article , thanks and we want extra! Added to FeedBurner as nicely
I like what you guys are up too. Such clever work and reporting! Keep up the excellent works guys I’ve incorporated you guys to my blogroll. I think it will improve the value of my web site :).
Nice post. I learn something more challenging on different blogs everyday. It will always be stimulating to read content from other writers and practice a little something from their store. I’d prefer to use some with the content on my blog whether you don’t mind. Natually I’ll give you a link on your web blog. Thanks for sharing.
you might have an amazing blog here! would you wish to make some invite posts on my blog?
I¦ve been exploring for a little bit for any high quality articles or weblog posts in this sort of space . Exploring in Yahoo I at last stumbled upon this site. Studying this info So i¦m happy to show that I’ve a very excellent uncanny feeling I came upon just what I needed. I so much certainly will make certain to do not put out of your mind this website and give it a glance regularly.
Hi! This post could not be written any better! Reading this post reminds me of my good old room mate! He always kept chatting about this. I will forward this article to him. Fairly certain he will have a good read. Thanks for sharing!
I went over this internet site and I conceive you have a lot of great info , bookmarked (:.
I think other web-site proprietors should take this web site as an model, very clean and great user friendly style and design, let alone the content. You’re an expert in this topic!