I work as a IT supporter and I have a question regarding Office 2019 versions.
So a coworker of mine installed an Allkeystore office2019 standard key. Well, this is not how we usually get the keys, and the boss was pissed. 1 Month later, the customer returns and his key is no longer working.
We now replaced the key with a true legit Office 2019 H&B key.
This whole drama made me wonder what actually is the difference between Office 2019 standard and Home & Business?
The error the customer got said something regarding no connection to the company server.
As of my understanding, standard keys are for companies having to regularly check in with the company server. H&B are for private users that donât have to check in anywhere.
I know that 2019 is not the newest version of Office, and I donât understand why my coworker did not at least get 2021. The entire thing is bullshit as I now bought the Home & Business version and my boss wanted to buy another standard or pro plus version.
The difference comes down to licensing. Office Standard is only available through Microsoftâs Volume Licensing channel which requires an enterprise agreement. The keys that are being sold on Allkeystore are being distributed outside their intended use or could actually be stolen from an organization.
There are three types of activation options used with MS VL products. Two of them (KMS and AD) talk to internal servers of organization and the third, MAK, usually communicates directly to Microsoftâs activation servers. The Office Standard product key your co-worker received would had been an MAK key. When organizations choose to use MAK they are issued a single product key that can be activated many, many times.
So likely the Office Standard key your co-worker received was also sold to lots of other people on Allkeystore. Then either Microsoft or a VLCS admin caught wind of excessive MAK activations and did a blanket deactivation on everyone using the key.
TL;DR - Be careful where you buy your keys from. Microsoft can shut them off whenever they want.
This holds true for legally direct purchased Microsoft keys as well.
If you set up LibreOffice with the right defaults for MS file standards (Save as .docx or .xlsx, etc. and rename Calc to âExcelâ) few people notice they are not using MS product.
This is all you need right here - key resellers are most likely selling Volume License keys, and Iâd bet each key is being sold to multiple people too. Just as long as it stays activated for long enough that the checkout transaction clears.
There are no âcheapâ ways to buy license keys, because Microsoftâs activation fundamentally doesnât work that way. Everything takes place on their server side. If you see a key being sold for less than it should be, thatâs because itâs either being sold outside of an enterprise agreement and will probably be deactivated, or was just outright stolen from a business, etc etc.
I wonât post here for obvious reasons, but for personal use there are tools out there that will convert an install of the freely available setup ISOs to VLK licensing and then exploit a VLK activation weakness to activate for six months IIRC. You can either automate it or just double-click a script twice a year.
Maybe for non-techy family members/etc, but anyone that needs to accomplish actual productivity work should just be using Office. I tried to give LibreOffice a chance for three years now, but Calc is missing a lot of basic features that Excel handles easily, the UI is awful, and Draw is an unacceptable meathook abortion of software when compared to Visio.
