Hewlett-Packard charges the full retail price ($149) for MS Office Home & Student 2007, but provides a single-use (OEM) license for this product vs. the three-use license (Retail) that comes with the same software purchased at Target, Best Buy or any other retail outlet for the same price.

I purchased a new laptop via the HP website and checked the box to purchase the MS Office software along with the computer. I fully understood that the price HP was offering for this software was equal to the retail price, and only purchased MS Office from HP because they were marketing it right there on the same site as I was purchasing the computer. NOWHERE ON THE HP WEBSITE does HP tell you that the MS Office version it provides AT FULL RETAIL PRICE does NOT provide the purchaser with the Retail License which allows the user to install the software in THREE computers. Instead, HP provides a disk marked OEM for which a different license applies - and under which you can only use the software on ONE computer.

The only way to figure this out is to read the fine print on BOTH licenses when installing the software - which can only be done AFTER the product is opened and used. This is an extremely deceptive marketing practice and grossly unfair to the consumer. I will now have to go out to Best Buy and purchase ANOTHER COPY of the software for my other child's computer for another $149. What a scam!

I have talked to both HP and Microsoft. HP first told me that software is not returnable. Later they told me that the 21 day period for return of product had expired, and that therefore they had no obligation to me anyway. Microsoft told me it was an HP issue and that there was nothing they could do, but that OEM software is usually provided at a substantial discount to the purchaser of the manufacturer's equipment. Both confirmed that they understood that the Retail version allows use on three computers and the OEM version limits use to a single computer. Microsoft said I wasn't the first to complain about this issue, so clearly others have been duped as well.

I had intervening circumstances that did not all me to set up the computer right away once it was delivered, and then it took me a while to understand that - YES INDEED - I had been tricked into paying full price for a limited-use product.

While this story is probably not news to a person in the software/computer industry, I figure there are a lot of home users like me who have NO IDEA that HP is so disreputable.