SteveMart.in

Often when you buy a new computer, the manufacturer gives you the option of having Microsoft Office pre-installed. This seems rather convenient since you don’t have to install Office after the fact. Your other option is to order a retail version of Microsoft Office separately either online or at a retail outlet and install it after you receive your new computer.

So, which is better to do, OEM or Retail?

The answer is Retail. When you have Microsoft Office pre-installed on your computer, you are getting the OEM version of the software which is licensed for THAT computer and THAT computer ONLY. When that computer dies, that license of Microsoft Office dies with it. You cannot install it on your next computer.

A retail version of Microsoft Office comes with different licensing. Typically with the retail version you are allowed to install it on two computers. The two computers should belong to the same person though such as a person’s desktop computer and laptop computer. The Student/Teacher version goes one step further and will allow you to install it on up to three computers in the same household. Also, if one of your computers dies, you can have your retail license reset by Microsoft and install the retail version on the dead computer’s replacement. It is not tied to the “Original Equipment” it was installed on.

So, if you have more than one computer (and even if you don’t), get a retail version of Microsoft Office so that you don’t have to buy an individual copy for each computer and so you can still use your Microsoft Office license on a future computer when your current one dies.

And, to save even more money, you could install the Openoffice.org office suite for free. It is compatible with the Microsoft Office formats of Word, Excel, and Powerpoint. If you have a fairly complex Excel or Word document, it may have some formatting issues especially if you use pivot tables in Excel or if you are accessing a database. But, for the common everyday spreadsheet and/or text document, it will work just fine.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 9th, 2008 at 8:10 pm and is filed under Computer Networking. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.