-=> Charles Scaglione wrote to Alan Zisman <=-

 CS> Alan Zisman wrote to Charles Scaglione

 AZ> CS> BTW, Microsoft Office application activations are quite
 AZ> CS> different in that it allows for installing on two machines - one
 AZ> CS> being a desktop and the other a mobile computer.

 AZ>While that's what the license agreement says, whenever I've
 AZ>installed a copy of
 AZ>Office XP on a second computer, I've had to phone into MS's
 AZ>activation phone site, and explained the situation to an employee...
 AZ>who then generated a 50-digit activation code and read it over the
 AZ>phone to me.

 AZ>It works, but it's not quite automatic!

 CS> Thanks for the info.  The way the EULA reads for MS Office one would
 CS> think the activation process was automatic.  However, I suppose if it
 CS> were automatic there would be many abuses.

To be automatic, it would simply have to allow any two installs, I suspect...
this way, Microsoft forces the customer to explain his/herself-- if they say
the magic words 'home and office' or 'desktop and notebook', there isn't any
problem. The same thing happens with copies of MS Publisher 2002 or FrontPage
2002 (if purchased as separate packages).

They've also been reasonable when I've explained how I had it installed on a
system, uninstalled it (and sold the system) and installed it on the
replacement... cleverer programming might give the option to de-activate when
uninstalling.

There have been some nasties with the corporate licensing when companies go
bankrupt and sell their hardware (with Office installed) to someone else...
K-Mart shut down an e-commerce division, but discovered when selling off the
division's computers that they couldn't simply transfer the Office licenses to
the new owners.
'
... -- az: email to alan (at) zisman (dot) ca
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