Microsoft Office 2013 Retail Box Won’t Actually Include Physical Disc

We’ve already posted twice about Microsoft Office 2013 licensing, first revealing that you can only activate a copy of Office 2013 once. The second post provided a little more clarification from Microsoft. Now we are talking about the boxed copy of Office.

For many countries, buying a boxed retail version is probably totally pointless. Why? The box will only contain a 25 digit product code and likely some kind of documentation. You then take the box home, go to the site directed and download it using the key. Yup, absolutely no disc is involved here.

This means that all versions of Office 2013 in many countries like the US are actually just Product Key Card variants, so really there is no reason to even get the box. Of course that’s not the case everywhere. If you live in a developing nation, the box will still in fact include a disc copy of Office 2013.

Okay, so this isn’t really a big deal for around 99% of the people out there, but what about those that live in a rural area of a country like the United States? I know some rural locations (like where I used to live) that have a max connection offering of only 756 kbps or so, yes really. I’m not sure how big Office 2013 is, but such a slow connection would make a download like this more than a little bit of a pain.

Additionally I know some folks who only have mobile broadband for their laptops, so they likely have data caps. Of course they can always visit a public location with free WiFi. Still, my point is that there might be special circumstances were a disk could be a useful option.

While Microsoft’s retail box doesn’t include said disk, I wonder if it is possible to contact them directly, explain your special circumstances and have one sent? What do you think, is Microsoft removing the disc from most countries a big deal or in today’s high-speed world mostly a non-issue for 99% of fokls out there?

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