seems resigned to the fact that rearm can be used by people other than IT administrators. "We allow five rearms for volume products," the company's spokeswoman said. "Of course that can be abused to let people use Office for longer periods of time without being nagged, but that's an acceptable trade-off."

Previous rearm techniques have regularly been reported by technology sites and bloggers. Last August, for example, the Windows Secrets newsletter published step-by-step instructions on using a single-line rearm command to to 's stock 30-day grace period.

Two years before, a similar technique surfaced for grace period to 120 days.

Gregg Keizer covers Microsoft, security issues, Apple, Web browsers and general technology breaking news for Computerworld . Follow Gregg on Twitter at @gkeizer or subscribe to Gregg's RSS feed . His e-mail address is gkeizer@ix.netcom.com .

in Computerworld's Desktop Apps Knowledge Center.