Office 2010 for 4 PC's

GT60

Hi Have office 2010 with I believe 3 licence's

What is stopping me from installing it on more than three pcs using the same licence / product key,
but PC's in different homes as my children live in different places


what would happen to the program would it stop working on one of the pc's
Thanks

DJBlu

They will ask you to register online with the key they give you. This will then be associated to the machine id that you have installed it on. The machine id is generated from numerous items such as motherboard serial etc.

Once the key is used it will not be able to be used again unless you use it on the same computer it was first installed on(i.e. system restore then installing office again)

GT60

Found my answer:


The only consumer edition of Office 2010 that is licensed for three simultaneous working installations is Office Home and Student 2010.

As you install and activate Office 2010, Microsoft's activation servers keep a record that comprises in part a unique hash of the product key combined with normally unchanging values unique to each PC. There is a certain amount of "wiggle room" built into the system so that an installation and activation done on a fourth PC after some time has elapsed past the third one will not normally "trigger" a denied activation.


If your key were to get out into the wild or if you tried to use the same product key to activate a large number of installations in a short amount of time, the product activation servers would simply deny any additional activations once their programmed limit was reached. In such a scenario, as activation is attempted and then denied, you would receive message along the lines of "this activation failed due to the product being activated too many times" and you would be offered an option to do a telephonic activation, part of which would be a further option to talk with an activation rep for more clarification of why activation was denied.
I am not aware of any "kill switch" programming in Office 2010 consumer editions that would deactivate an existing, legitimate activation of an Office 2010 installation if the key used to do those installations and activations were to suddenly be used to try to do a whole bunch more additional installations and activations.

buglawton

Put Libreoffice on the least used of the 4 instead.

I_have_spoken

Assuming the PCs are on the Internet, the 4th install will stop with the message you've used the 3 licenses.