Microsoft is busy changing to a devices and services company. One of those changes is making the Office 365 subscriptions to the desktop Office 2013 software a better deal than buying a perpetual licence in a cardboard box (which, unless you're in a developing country with notoriously poor connectivity, contains only a product key card with a code on). There's been a lot of discussion of the limitation that the retail (consumer rather than business) versions of Office 2013 can only be installed on one PC — not one at a time, but only one PC. If it crashes, you can reinstall Office — on that same computer. If the PC fails, you can't transfer the licence. A stringent new restriction pushing users to the Office 365 service, most commentators have suggested. ZDNet colleague Ed Bott takes a more thoughtful look at Microsoft's changing business model.