Office allows activation for 3 computers. Is that "3 at one time" or "3 for all time"? That is, if you had Office running on 3 computers and replaced one of the computers... does MSFT give you another key for the new machine? TIA
3 at all times. p.s. this clone is free and with unlimited activation. ;-) perfect for anyone who does not need to run MS macro doc/xls. http://www.openoffice.org/
i've used openoffice. Its decent considering its free, but not as clean looking as MS office. Up here in Canada they have $50 deals on MS office right now for home and students at bestbuy and futureshop. Good deal - its the full version and good for 3 users.
What happens when you do a fresh install of the OS from scratch.. on a machine you've already activated Office on before... Does the activation after the fresh install count as another of your 3?
MS has this "Genuine" thing that's supposed to keep track of installations, activations, and simultaneous use. I think the license says for 3 computer use, not 3 activations. For OS, it is supposed to install on one MOBO only. You can change HDD, reinstall and activate as many times as you want, but you can't move it to another MOBO after activation. I don't know how stringent they are on their compliance tho.
If you activate electronically too many times (possibly due to PC/OS crashes), you'd reach a maximum number of activations after which you cannot activate anymore. In this case, choose the phone activation through the 1800#. This resets electronic activation process. Another suggestion is to take an image of your hard drive after a clean setup and activation. If you encounter any OS crashes or virus problems, you can reinstall the image instead and resume full operational system in minutes. I use Paragon Hard Disk Manager to do that.