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  1. Member
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    What's the difference between OEM and full versions of Office 2003? I've found some that say OEM can be installed only on a single computer. Does that mean you'd have to buy another copy of Office every time a system is upgraded if you have OEM version, and does the full version allow it to be reinstalled when a system is upgraded? I've had OEM Office 97 about 10 years and was able to install it again when I upgraded the system. Has ability to do that with OEM versions been removed on newer Office versions, and does full version allow reinstall upon upgrade of system?
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  2. this is the microsoft standard reply.

    Microsoft OEM software cannot be transferred to a different computer. It's licensing must remain on the very first computer it was installed on.
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  3. contrarian rallynavvie's Avatar
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    And the fun part of that statement is what constitutes a computer. If you keep putting your new system in the same computer case and you apply the OEM sticker to the inside of the case somewhere you might have a good argument. Or some have said that transferring something as simple as a hard drive from the original PC is enough to say it's the same computer.
    FB-DIMM are the real cause of global warming
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    What if I buy OEM Office today and the hard drive dies tomorrow? Then I've got to buy another hard drive and another OEM Office! How ridiculous can they get?
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  5. you were able to do that with office 97 since it didn't have activation.

    The Student and teacher version of office 2007 allows install on up to 3 computers as I remember it.
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  6. Banned
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    Well, these sorts of things are standard practice in the software industry, and yes, as bevills1 said this is ridiculous. I remember a court case last year where some software company had an EULA that said that the user was essentially renting the software from the company and had no right of resale. The company sued a guy who was re-selling it on Ebay and the guy won. The courts ruled that just because an EULA says you don't have rights, that doesn't necessarily make it so. The court said in its ruling that books, CDs, etc. have always had what I think is called "the right of first sale" which means that the person who bought it can resell it once to someone else (this means you can't buy one copy and sell ten copies - you can only sell what you buy) and software was no different.

    Anyway, this kind of thing is quite typical. One of my friends is a lawyer and they do PDF stuff a lot in the legal word. He basically can't function without something that creates PDFs, so he bought 2 copies of Acrobat. He bought OEM versions, which is legal, but Adobe says it's not legal to re-sell OEM versions. My friend is so paranoid about the whole thing that the next time he is just going to buy it outright from Adobe at their ridiculous markup price because he doesn't want to take a chance on the OEM being legal. He fears that the BSA (Business Software Alliance) will one day come after him and his 3 person office. Why? There's no reason, but he still fears it. So you see what kind of paranoia the software companies have created when an attorney with 3 employees literally lives in terror that he might, maybe, one day have to pay thousands of dollars in fines because he bought TWO copies of OEM Acrobat.

    bevills1 - You might consider just using the free Open Office instead of any version of Microsoft Office. While there are always people who do weird things with Office and they can't use look alikes, for the vast majority of people with simple needs, Open Office works very well.
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    Unfortunately I'm one who does weird things with Office but not by choice. It's due to the need to convert xls file to xml file which Open Office won't do as stated my last Jun22 post at https://forum.videohelp.com/topic369624.html .
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  8. Banned
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    Ah yes... forgot about that thread... definitely bitch at your state tax office and ask them why they are essentially requiring XML to be used when there is ABSOLUTELY ZERO NEED and ZERO BENEFIT from doing so.

    On the plus side, keep your receipts as you should be able to deduct the cost from your next year's taxes. If you use Turbo Tax, it will ask you about software you bought to do your taxes and technically if you had to buy Microsoft Office to do your taxes, you should (I think) be able to deduct it.
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  9. Originally Posted by TBoneit

    The Student and teacher version of office 2007 allows install on up to 3 computers as I remember it.
    That's what I use and it was <$100USD, it doesn't have Publisher or Outlook 2007 though.
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  10. contrarian rallynavvie's Avatar
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    Originally Posted by jman98
    definitely bitch at your state tax office and ask them why they are essentially requiring XML to be used when there is ABSOLUTELY ZERO NEED and ZERO BENEFIT from doing so.
    Are you saying that taxes should be easy and make sense?
    Has your friend thought of using an OCR company to do his Acrobat work instead of buying licenses? If you find the right store/employees you can even trick a FedEx Office into OCR scanning to PDF for extremely cheap.

    As to the licensing BS with M$ I am well deep in it with their enterprise reps and our TAM. They have some seriously ridiculous licensing models for VMs which are the most frustrating catch 22 ever
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  11. Member
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    Originally Posted by bevills1
    What if I buy OEM Office today and the hard drive dies tomorrow? Then I've got to buy another hard drive and another OEM Office! How ridiculous can they get?
    Not true

    Student version dosen't include ms access but can be activated on 3 systems.

    Oem vs retail

    Oem stays with the original system ... retail can be transferred after original system has been decommissioned and product uninstalled.
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