Microsoft finally listening to consumers and what we want

First it will be the return of the start menu with Windows Blue and now relaxing the ridiculous installation requirements of Office 2013.  Microsoft today backpedaled from a sweeping change in its licensing for retail copies of Office 2013, saying that customers now have the right to move the software from one machine to another.

"We received customer feedback that they wanted this flexibility, and we thought this was reasonable, just and fair," said Jevon Fark, senior marketing manager with the Office team, in an interview Tuesday. "We will honor these new terms starting this morning."

The revised policy lets customers who purchased a retail copy of Office 2013 -- the $140 Home & Student, $220 Home & Business or $400 Professional editions -- reassign the license to another PC they own or control.

That's a change from the end-user licensing agreement (EULA) that debuted with Office 2013: Out the gate, the "perpetual" licenses sold at retail -- those paid for once, with rights to use them forever -- were permanently tied to the first PC they were installed on.

Under the now-defunct licensing terms, customers were not allowed to delete Office 2013 on one machine, then install it on another, even if that second PC was a replacement for the first, which may have been lost, stolen, damaged or simply outworn its usefulness. The only exception was if a computer had conked out while under warranty.