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I've been saddled with quite a conscience when it comes to software so need to make sure that it's genuine & correctly licensed.
We need to buy a copy of Office or a 365 subscription for my Wife's laptop; I need it to be legal but equally I don't want to spend more than I need to.
I am aware that 3rd parties legally sell licenses and physical products for somewhat less than Microsoft's own Store but others are absurdly cheap and so almost certainly counterfeit.
Where I'm struggling is with big retailers like Amazon. Amazon host a large number of 3rd party license resellers, a number of which I suspect supply fake licenses (Office Professional Plus for £25 etc.). I'd assume that Amazon play the Ebay card of "We only provide the market place" (although the listings usually state Sold by xxxx, fulfilled by Amazon so Amazon seem to be taking an active part; it's also Amazon that bombard me with adverts for said product once I've viewed it).
Are there any genuine Office bargains to be had or is it just safer to buy a 365 subscription from MS themselves (after all, spread over a year they're not too pricey)?
Argos was 39.99 recently for the year with some AV thrown in which I got £6-7 for on fleabay. Gone back up to £59.99 though it may come down again as it seems to yoyo.
I am aware that 3rd parties legally sell licenses and physical products for somewhat less than Microsoft’s own Store but others are absurdly cheap and so almost certainly counterfeit.
Are they all counterfeit? I've bought them for work from various sellers, seem legit to me; they provide VAT invoice etc. You don't get any media or support which is why they're cheaper than buying it in a shop etc.
Are they all counterfeit?
I don't know, which is partly why I'm asking, but I'm working on the "If it's too good to be true" principle; £419 for Office Professional 2019 via the Microsoft Store vs. £25 from some license resellers seems too good to be true.
Argos definitely not in the third-party ebay/amazon marketplace end of the market. You even buy a physical product even though it's only a license card in a little box.
Whilst Amazon might be a big player there's way too much inventory on there that never passes through their hands for me to think that they have even the first clue about most of the stuff they're selling.
MS do revoke OEM licenses if they spot abuse, we had one of our legitimate work ones revoked and suddenly a load of machines stopped working. The license came from our approved MS supplier, but maybe it leaked onto the interweb, so MS disabled it...
You've a number of options here.
First, does she / you use it at work? Microsoft offer a home user programme to corporates, if your place of work has signed up to this then she can get the whole Office suite for like a tenner. Google "Microsoft HUP."
Second, you can use MS Office online, right now, for free. https://products.office.com/en-gb/free-office-online-for-the-web
Third, this may be out of date information now but you used to be able to get a significant discount if you were in academia, though you'd to prove it with a .ac.uk email address or equivalent. Check the software4students website.
Fourth, does she actually need MS Office? Many folk say they do when Wordpad would suffice for what they use it for. LibreOffice is free and broadly compatible with MS Office.
£5.99 a month with buy personal MS office account.
You could always look into libre office!
(used to be called open office) Totally fee and open source.
I've only used it for word and excel equivalents, but it's compatible with MS document formats as long as you're not doing anything too technical.
Give it a look, it's free.
People paying money for basic word and excel are a bit crazy if you ask me.
Personally I just run a pirate version of MS office, but libre office is pretty damn good these days.
There are licence keys on Ebay for about £6 or so. They claim to be genuine. Do they work? Looks like most of them say they can only be activated once.
The sellers have thousands of positive feedback. I thought they would have been blocked by now, if it was counterfeit.
From the comments on some of those cheap Office Pro Plus licences they're genuine BUT have come from volume licence agreements (and presumably are being resold illegally). For a client I work for I have an Office Pro Plus MAK key good for 5000 installs (not actually sure why they have it as we use KMS but whatever). Nothing stopping me selling those individually on Amazon/eBay but firstly it's against the terms of the MS volume licence agreement, secondly it's probably theft and thirdly those 5000 licences get used up through online/phone activations - when it reaches 0 you can't activate anymore (it seems some resellers are just reselling already used-up MAK keys).
Also Microsoft can invalidate that licence key if they discover it's been used against their T&Cs (or reported stolen by the company that purchased it), that will certainly stop future activations using that key, not sure if it can deactivate any previously licensed copies though.
European Court has ruled that software licences can be resold. Even if the terms say it is not allowed. So not necessarily illegal.
not sure if it can deactivate any previously licensed copies though
Yep, see my post above!
£5.99 a month with buy personal MS office account.
Cheap over the first year, but it goes on for ever, so rapidly gets more expensive than just buying a copy and using it for years (eg I still use Office 2010).
European Court has ruled that software licences can be resold.
That's assuming the person reselling the licence is actually the legitimate licence holder in the first place, surely?
Cheap over the first year, but it goes on for ever, so rapidly gets more expensive than just buying a copy and using it for years
Indeed that’s how maths works, except it can be cancelled of course.