"This change by Microsoft is just a reflection of the times we live in - we are living in a networked, always on, cloud-based, software as a service world and we are going to have to come to terms with it - sooner or later."

Mark Kaelin's comment is rubbish! I have no intention of going where MS tells me to go - I am not a sheep. Most of the licensing deals on offer for Office 2013 do not appeal to me as options, especially the Cloud options. It's about time MS realised that Office is no longer the only seriously viable productivity suite out there.