As a business or residential Client, you may be using Microsoft Office 365. Whilst there are several different versions of Office 365, in essence, you are leasing the software (Word, Outlook, Excel etc) from Microsoft rather than paying upfront for the relevant office version. It is still possible to purchase the latest office version (currently Office 2016) but this will cost you in excess of £150 for 1 computer.
Microsoft launch of Office 365 was a great success as the annual cost for several licences was just £80.00 per year. The Home subscription was advertised as 5 licences, however Microsoft allowed up to 10 different devices all for £80.00 per year (home version). The business version costs around £4.00 per month per device.
Due to the success of this new subscription platform, Microsoft have realised that many home users and business were taking advantage of the ability to use Office 365 on 10 computers rather than the official limit of 5. This obviously cost Microsoft in loss of sales and profit.
As of October 2019, Microsoft have now placed a cap on the number of activations per Office 365 subscription. The limit is 6 simultaneous machine activations. This means you can only use your copy of Office on 6 machines. If a machine is no longer in use or scrapped, you can remove that particular computer activation and re-use the licence on another pc or mac.
Whilst the above new restriction may cost users slightly more money per year, when compared to the cost of outright Office 2016 purchase, the Office 365 subscription still presents excellent comparative value.
In addition to the use of the premium programs such as Word and Outlook, additional benefits include Microsoft support, 60 minutes of Skype Talk and the ability to share documents with other users.