IMPORTANT – Microsoft Office 2013 Licensing Information/Considerations

By | February 22, 2013

 

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Microsoft Office 2010 is now end of life and has been replaced by Microsoft Office 2013.

Readycrest is therefore no longer able to obtain Microsoft Office 2010 licenses for our clients although stocks of Office 2010 may still be available via certain online retailers (while stocks last).

There have been some changes to the licensing behind the Office 2013 products.

Office 2013 is available via Key Card activation or via the various OPEN licensing models  (Note: A minimum of 5 licenses are required to start a new OPEN license agreement).


OPTION 1 –  ‘Product Key Card’. – A Product Key Card is the cheapest way of licensing Microsoft Office.  The license is for a single PC and is non-transferable (i.e. the license lives and dies on the PC on which it is installed).  These licenses do not include downgrade rights, meaning that only the Office 2013 applications such as Word 2013 and Outlook 2013 can be installed.   Key Card activations are available in a ‘Home and Business’ and ‘Professional’ offering (please see the the Retail listed products in the below comparison chart).

IMPORTANT: Customers requiring Microsoft Outlook to connect to a Microsoft Exchange 2003 or Small Business Server 2003 environment will not be able to use Outlook 2013.  Product Key Card licenses do not allow the required downgrade rights to install Outlook 2010 (which was compatible).  In this scenario Outlook 2013 will need to be uninstalled and a copy of Outlook 2003 installed within the license agreement of the Exchange/SBS 2003 deployment.  This will limit functionality to the Outlook 2003 feature set.  

OPTION2  –  ‘Open License’ – The key benefit of an Open License is that it comes with downgrade rights.  This allows (within the license agreement)the end user to install Microsoft Office 2010 applications if you wish. The license is also transferable (i.e. it could be moved to another PC in the future).  Microsoft OPEN licenses are more expensive than Product Key Card licenses but do provide more flexibility and resolve issues with compatibility.


Please contact your Readycrest Account Manager for product pricing and further information

Comparison of Office 2013 Suites  

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PLEASE NOTE THAT OFFICE 2013 ISN’T COMPATIBLE WITH WINDOWS XP!