Microsoft rolled out its subscription-based Office 365 offerings to consumers in late January for the first time.

Perpetual licenses, on the other hand, never expire, so users can always run the software. That means that if an Office 365 subscriber stops paying for the subscription, then that person loses the rights to run the software. The catch for Office 365 users is that their subscription is not a 'perpetual license,' as afforded by boxed Office 2013 copies.

The transfer involves a deactivation and activation process using a Windows account. These Office 365 subscribers also have the rights to transfer the software to other machines. In contrast to Office 2013 for consumer users, those who subscribe to Office 365 Home Premium or Office 365 University can install up to five or up to two installations of Office, respectively, on their PCs. They still must be installed on a machine by the end user, despite the association with Microsoft's services.)

(Note that the Office versions sold through Office 365 are not delivered as a service over the Web. Office users wanting those PC transfer rights either have to hunt down a boxed retail copy of Office 2010 or subscribe to certain editions of Office through 'Office 365,' which is Microsoft's branding for its online services. There apparently isn't an Office 2013 FPP version at all, and that seems to have caused some consternation. It seems it's now difficult to find the FPP version of Office 2010 at online shopping sites. In contrast to consumers, organizations may typically purchase Office through Microsoft's volume licensing, which costs more, but this blog claims that organizations get more too, mostly in terms of licensing and use options. Those two versions of Office 2010 were sold at different prices. While most consumers might think of boxed Office copies as being sold in just one form, Microsoft had offered two product forms with Office 2010 - a 'product key card' (PKI) version with no transfer rights and a 'full package product' (FPP) version that had transfer rights. Office 2010, Office 2013 and Office 365 transfer rights. There is one exception: It's possible to transfer Office 2013 installations to another PC if there's an equipment failure and the machine gets replaced under warrantee, according to a Microsoft announcement (see Microsoft's chart below).

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