Microsoft Office - Multiple licenses

[Wully]

Guys
I know from reading some of the posts that a few of the members are in the IT industry so I'm looking for some advice.

I'm basically looking for a MS Office package that comes with multiple licenses. We have around 6 PC's in total.

Where can i look / how much should i be looking to pay?

Thanks.

 

[TonyVianoAmbiente]

It probably isn't the answer you wanted, but after 17 years of using Microsoft Office products now I use OpenOffice for my business.

I won't ever go back to Microsoft. Not only is OpenOffice free (although I voluntarily make a contribution) but it is much more stable than Microsoft Office and is less hungry for memory and hard disk capacity.

There are equivalents of Word, Excel and Powerpoint, all of which work well and both read and write files in Microsoft formats. It isn't anywhere near as flaky either. It never seems to crash. However, I cannot speak for other elements of the package.

Just my £0.02.


DOWNLOAD OPEN OFFICE HERE

 

[NiallerS320]

Yep open office all the way, although not sure if it's compatible with Office 2007 and the xml format, personally the company I used to work for had a licencing deal and we got it for €19 per seat but I recently bought 6 copies for a client and they were all full priced unfortunately.

 

[masqueraid]

There is a plug-in for OpenOffice that gives compatibility with Office 2007's XML formats.

If you are going for Microsoft though your best option would be something like their 'Open Value' 3 year leasing system - this is the information on it provided to their retailers https://partner.microsoft.com/40021969

 

[HughJarse]

We use here
http://ramesys.com/
and here
http://www.phoenixs.co.uk/

 

[Dryce]

Guys
I know from reading some of the posts that a few of the members are in the IT industry so I'm looking for some advice.

I'm basically looking for a MS Office package that comes with multiple licenses. We have around 6 PC's in total.

Where can i look / how much should i be looking to pay?

In my view MS multi-licencing doesn't make sense unless you are after a lot more than 6 licences and/or you need to licence multiple versions across your organisation (eg. you use 2003 and 2007).

Retail licences are expensive.

The cheapest way to get Office is via OEM licencing and buy it with a new system. If you keep the system for say three years and simply cost Office by taking a third of the OEM cost per year it makes a mockery what some enterprises pay MS per user per year.

You used to be able to get OEM licences for Office with 'hardware' from some suppliers prior to Office 2007 where 'hardware' didn't have to be a complete system. MS clamped down progressively on this business.

I would be inclined to suggest you review your systems and basically see if it is worth buying new systems with OEM licences.

Alternatively if you have an open mind, as suggested elsewhere, look at OpenOffice. For general purpose use OpenOffice is a reasonable replacement for Word and Excel.

If you have a really open mind then if you went down the Mac route iWork 08 is quite different but also very good and only £55 inc VAT.

 

[Wully]

Why have MS made it so difficult for small businesses. They are forcing the use of a third party who will get their cut on any deal, why can't i simply purchase the required quantity of licenses at a reduced rate since it is for a business organisation.

The best option as proposed by Dryce would have been the OEM route however all the machines have been purchased already.

Is it possible to purchase Office 2003 say as 2007 doesn't offer any great advantage to us.

 

[Dryce]

Why have MS made it so difficult for small businesses. They are forcing the use of a third party who will get their cut on any deal, why can't i simply purchase the required quantity of licenses at a reduced rate since it is for a business organisation.

It's only 'difficult' because hardware is so cheap. If you were paying £5k per desktop system or laptop then the retail price of Office would look less expensive.

If you just need Word then you might find old versions of Works Suite on the market (but the version of Word would be XP). You might be able to do a version upgrade from that (though be careful as it may no longer be possible - it used to be possible with older versions).

However. If you go to the Dell website you can buy a Vostro base unit with no monitor, an old model CPU, 1GB RAM, 160GB disk, and the poxiest version of Vista for:

£107 + delivery

On top of that Office costs £89 for the basic, £169 for SBE, and £199 for Pro.

If you were buying five of these systems you might just persuade Dell to drop the delivery charge (otherwise known as 'the margin') a bit. Though I suspect that the pricing is a bit of an aberation so they won't be as keen to do that compared with the more expensive systems.

The OEM licences will be 'locked' to the systems. Otherwise you could just dump them. But you get Office 2007 with Word and Excel from £196 + delivery + VAT. Powerpoint effectively costs you an extra £80 + VAT.

 

[Wully]

Been looking around and i've come up with a possible option, let me know what you think:-

Buy Office 2007 Basic OEM for £95.17 ex vat for each machine from here :- Link

Would need to check they would sell me them!

Only thing is i would need to source the media! mmmmmmm

 

[Dryce]

Been looking around and i've come up with a possible option, let me know what you think:-

Buy Office 2007 Basic OEM for £95.17 ex vat for each machine from here :- Link

Would need to check they would sell me them!

Only thing is i would need to source the media! mmmmmmm

I doubt that you can do this legally.

The old 2003 OEM media + licence was available to self-builders. The new 2007 OEM licences are only useable if you buy a system with the OEM version pre-installed. System builders presumably get some sort of pack from MS to do the pre-install.

MS don't want people moving OEM licences between systems. They probably figure a lot of self builders will qualify for the home and student edition. So it lets them nail down the commercial market without any real risk of losing sales due to the lack of flexibility.