but we all know that if you walk into a Staples or Best Buy and buy 100 of those cards, they have no clue what you are doing or why or what you should be doing, etc. I think MS is also relying on their vendors (insight/CDW/etc) to help companies purchase the correct thing. For example, the FPK's don't indicate they are tied to a single machine until after you purchase/download and during the install read the EULA, you read the whole thing every time, right? yeah I don't either. Personally i think they do this to entice very small businesses and home users to 'be legal.' But they don't do enough to educate SMB's of the licensing requirements and advantages of doing things correctly. This *IS* the case with office 2013 professional, where the MOL version is cheaper than the retail box. What I don't understand is why Microsoft 'tempts' people into doing this by making one version (in this case the WRONG version) cheaper? The volume license should be the same price or cheaper than this other version. It is clear that what he purchased was not the best solution for his environment for the reasons you listed and the reasons the OP listed. With OEM and Full Box you have to manually install each one. With a VL, you're always using the same key and you are allowed to use images to deploy Office.

They might be, but you are still limited in the number of machines you can install that copy on, and would have to manually deal with the CD Keys. Dash, CDW is selling individual licenses for Home and Business and I confirmed that it is a few bucks more than the keycard version he bought.

Buy microsoft office 2013 professional