Microsoft reverses course, says Office 2013 licenses can now be transferred to new PCs

There were plenty of Office users none too pleased with Microsoft's recent decision to tie Office 2013 retail licenses to the PC they were originally installed on, and it looks like the company has been listening to them. Microsoft announced in a blog post today that it's changing the policy, and will now allow users to transfer the license if they get a new PC or the old one fails. The company says that it will update the actual license agreement included with the software in a future release, but makes it clear that the change is effective immediately. Of course, there are still some limitations. You can't transfer the license more than once every 90 days unless there's a hardware failure, and you still can't have the software on more than one computer at the same time. You can find the full text of the new license at the source link.

[Source: Engadget]

Microsoft announces Office 2013 and 365 pricing, nudges users towards annual subscriptions

While we still don't know exactly when Microsoft will unleash Office 2013 and Office 365 upon the world, we do know how much they'll cost. While standalone versions, licensed for use on a single computer, will still be available, the new strategy makes it more affordable for many homes and business to opt for a subscription package instead. Office Home and Student 2013 (with Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote) will cost $139, while Home and Business adds Outlook for $219, and the top of the line Professional package includes all of those along with Access and Publisher for $399. Compare those to the two Office 365 packages, which promise customizations that follow their users around, expanded cloud storage, access to all of the apps and automatically receive any future updates that come out for them.

[Source: Engadget- Read more there]