Both options to activate Office 2010, KMS and MAK, have their up- and downsides. This article discusses a few things you have to consider when you decide for the activation method in your organization.

Now that you have an overview of the Office 2010 KMS activation and MAK activation, I can address the question of whether KMS or MAK is the better option to activate Office 2010. Most of the arguments also apply for Windows Vista and Windows 7 activation.

Microsoft recommendations

You need at least 5 Office 2010 installations if you want to activate Office 2010 with KMS; however, Microsoft recommends using MAK activation if your network has fewer than 25 computers. If you have more than 50 Office 2010 machines, Microsoft recommends going for KMS.

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This article summarizes the most important facts about Office 2010 MAK activation. Among other things, you will learn about the ways to deploy the MAK key, about MAK independent activation and MAK proxy activation.

In the last post of this series, I discussed Office 2010 KMS activation. Today, I will have a look at the second option that Microsoft provides for volume activation—the Office 2010 MAK activation. Like in my previous post, I will only list the most important facts you have to know.

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This article summarizes all important facts about Microsoft Office 2010 KMS activation. Among other things you will learn which software you need, how to activate the KMS host and what things you have to keep mind if you use KMS activation.

Many admins who still haven’t upgraded to Vista or Windows 7 will first have to deal with volume activation when they deploy Office 2010. Microsoft’s documentation about Office 2010 volume activation is quite comprehensive. Today, I will summarize the key facts about Office 2010 KMS activation. In my next post, I will cover MAK activation, and in the last post of this series I will compare Office 2010 KMS and MAK activation.

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Office 2010 activation is a new topic that many users and admins face. This article explains how you can activate Office 2010 and rearm Office 2010.

This article explains how you can rearm Office 2010 and for what you need this feature.

Office 2010 is certainly the best Office suite out there. However, compared to Office 2007 it has one major drawback: Like Vista and Windows 7, Office 2010 has to be activated. However, Office 2010 behaves a little different than Windows if it is not activated. Rearming Office 2010, that is resetting the grace period, works similar as rearming Windows.

Office 2010 Reduced Functionality Mode

Retail versions of Office 2010 will only run in Reduced Functionality Mode (RFM) after the grace period of 30 days has been exceeded. In RFM Office, documents can only be viewed but not modified.

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Windows licensing got more and more and complicated over the years. With Windows Server 2008 and Vista SP1, Microsoft changed the rules again. In this post, I summarized the most important facts about Windows licensing, KMS 1.1 (Key Management Services) and VAMT 1.1 (Volume Activation Management Tool). And of course, I couldn’t help myself but complain again about the extra work Microsoft imposed on us.

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Almost all the IT news sites covered this great news. I think it was predictable that Microsoft would remove Reduced Functionality Mode (RFM) sooner or later. I am just a little surprised that they gave up so soon. My personal term for RFM and Vista activation in general is Windows Genuine Activation mess (WGA). If you have been reading this blog for some time now, then you know what I am talking about.

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It was hard to miss the news about the WGA (Windows Genuine Advantage (?)) outage Microsoft had this weekend. Just in case you managed it somehow, you might want to catch up on it in this Computerworld article. Microsoft’s Windows Genuine Advantage blog has an update about the “continuing investigation”. Alex Kochis claims that “fewer than 12,000 systems were affected”.

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Thanks to everyone who took part in my KMS (Key Management Service) vs. MAK (Multiple Key Management) survey. 270 voted so far for one of the four options, I offered in this poll. You could choose among four options to activate Vista in a corporate environment: KMS, MAK, MAK and KMS, and OEM/retail. The fifth option is for those of you, who still have to make that choice.

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After summarizing all pros and cons for MAK and KMS activation, I am still undecided as to which option is better. I am curious to know which solution you would prefer. I would also like to know why you decided for one or the other solution. You can leave your thoughts as a comment in this post. If you don’t have the time for this, you can just take part in the opinion poll. If you’re unsure, then one of two these posts might be of help:

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Microsoft published a paper explaining how to isolate the KMS (Key Management Service) using IPsec. KMS doesn’t require any kind auf authentication. Therefore, anyone who gets network access to your KMS server is able to activate its Vista machine this way.

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Some days ago, I blogged about the pros and cons of KMS (Key Management Service). In this post, I summarized the pros and cons of using MAK (Multiple Activation Key), the second option for activating Vista in a corporate environment.

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Some days ago, I published the first part of my review of VAMT where I wrote about my experiences with the Status Collection and the MAK management functionality. Today, I’ll discuss the most interesting features of VAMT, i.e. its ability to deploy MAK keys to Vista machines.

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I have been spending quite some time now figuring out Vista’s activation mechanisms, and I think I know all of its options. The main question, however, is, would you use MAK (Multiple Key Management) or KMS (Key Management Service)? In this article, I summarized the pros and cons of KMS. In one of my next posts, I’ll write about the advantages and disadvantages of MAK activation. If you are not yet familiar with both technologies, I suggest reading one of my introductory articles about Vista activation first (see links above).

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Sometime ago, I reported that we were unable to set up our KMS (Key Management Service) under Windows Server 2003 because we already exceeded the number of allowed KMS installations. You can only install 6 KMS hosts by default. Since we accidently used the KMS key to activate some Vista clients, we couldn’t use this key anymore to activate the KMS host on a Windows server.

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Last Friday, I blogged about the “Skipream hack” that lets you use Vista without activating it. A commentator here on 4sysops linked to an article on a Microsoft blog claiming that this workaround won’t work. Although the arguments of Alex Kochis, the author of this post, are quite convincing, it is strange somehow that Brian Livingston, who is supposed to be a reliable source, purports that the Skiprearm trick actually worked in his tests.

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