This is really bad news. I wasn't gonna buy a sub right now, but I wonder if I should, before they change it? I might yet want to have Windows 8 and Office 13 and the old terms allow me to have multiple copies, multiple versions, forever. With the new version, these will become temporary and the TechNet sub will become worthless.
There's a good article on this
here.
Quote:
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In practice, this means much more restrictive terms, with every change being something that Microsoft has taken away. This greatly devalues the benefit of such a subscription, making it frankly not worth it to swathes of ordinary people. No doubt, this will sharply reduce the number of TechNet subscriptions taken out, which Microsoft hopes will be made up for by people purchasing individual full-price product licenses. The biggest change hits the length of use of the software: out goes the perpetual license use, which allowed the software to be used forever, even after the subscription had long lapsed. Instead, the software will now only available for use within the yearly subscription period, making it very temporary and therefore far less useful. We surmise that this will be enforced by making product activation fail for TechNet product keys once the subscription has lapsed and holding the hapless user to ransom, for payment.
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