Microsoft to Charge for Office Beta 190
theodp writes "Beginning next Wednesday, those who download the 2007 Microsoft Office system Beta 2 will be charged $1.50 per download, according to a Microsoft spokeswoman." From the article: "Although Microsoft's Information Worker Product Management Group decided to initiate a fee for new users of Beta 2, the "technical refresh," or update, for current users of the software will remain free, the spokeswoman said. Those who want to test drive Beta 2 to review how it works can access the software for free. But if they need to test it against their internal systems, a download or the CD is required. "
charging for a favor? (Score:4, Insightful)
Bandwidth ! (Score:4, Insightful)
I wanted to joke if microsoft wants to cover bandwidth charges.....but seems thats the real reason !!
FTFA:
Re:$1.50? (Score:2, Insightful)
Not just $1.50 (Score:5, Insightful)
I really wish credit card issuers would let us use bogus values for that information. They need it on file to bill you and contact you in an emergency like the cancellation/disablement of your card due to fraud. But for all the merchants, that info is just a fancy password to authenticate you with. But it also suffers from the same problems that SS#'s do - its a password that isn't really a secret, especially the more frequently you use your card.
If this is about bandwidth costs... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:$1.50? (Score:3, Insightful)
"From one of the richest cash companies im the world who owns the Office? Yeah! Pinching pennies, are they?"
Correct. This is exactly how they became so wealthy.
$1.50 MORE THAN I'LL PAY WHEN I STEAL IT FROM WORK (Score:0, Insightful)
Fresh from under a rock, aren't we? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:$1.50? (Score:5, Insightful)
Not only will you be assimilated, but you're going to damn well pay for the privilege.
Charles
The peopl eit will deter (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, for a company, or even a serious individual, $1.50 is peanuts. I can gaurentee we'll pick up a few copies at work to test, though in our setup there is very little we need ot test agianst.
Remember MS has internal testers, lots of them, who's entire job is to test the software and find bugs. Public betas aren't because they don't have testers, they are more for public commentary on features and impementation, and more importantly so people can test new MS stuff against their configuration. With Vista, for example, MS was well aware of the bugs in it. They weren't releasing it because they thought it was perfect, they were releasing it because they thought it was good enough to be useful for people to test with.
In MS speak, an RC, Release Candidate, is when their internal testers think a product is ready to go. They release that to the public, or a limited set for testing against the multitude of configs. If serious problems are found, they do another RC, if not that RC goes final.
So I think MS would be plenty happy to get rid of the casual downloaders that eat up bandwidth and, if they file reports at all, file things like "T3h program si crashing on me!!!1111". Well duh, it's beta. They'd like to know what is happening to make that happen, though they already may know about it. they are more interested in letting you test it against your setup, and figure out what you need to do to be ready for it.
People value things more when charged. (Score:5, Insightful)
As pointed out above, most of the people who were prepared to download this beta software for free probably already have. Now this announcement that a charge will be imposed will have 2 effects.
There's the aforementioned use of credit card details to build up an interested customer base (and I wouldn't be surprised if there was an accompanying list of people to put through a BSA audit should they not subsequently purchase an upgrade).
I wouldn't be surprised if $1.50 wasn't even enough to cover the cost of implementing a charging infrastructure ; after transaction charges, server costs, implementation, project documentation, etc.
Re:charging for a favor? (Score:5, Insightful)
They don't download it to test it. They download it to be cooler than everyone else. To have the new, bleeding-edge stuff.
So, MS probably isn't getting much useful data about bugs, certainly, if it's this many people, they only need a fraction of them. Instead, they have thousands of users of buggy software, and since they're chasing off a reputation for buggy software, they probably don't really want this.
So, $1.50. You get software really cheaply (minus support, though, they'll probably be nagged into it), and they get fewer yahoos, a laughable amount of money, and justification for this.
Don't forget, a lot of the beta testers will just run the betas, and not purchase the actual product. Why get the newest version of office for a couple hundred? You can get the beta for free. Now that it's $1.50, most people will probably stick to the version that came with their computer.
That's why. Even a small company can appreciate that this many beta testers is not a favor of any kind, except perhaps for publicity's sake.
Re:The peopl eit will deter (Score:3, Insightful)
Of course, if the $1.50 charge now brings a $10 or whatever rebate in the mail later for testers, it will be good marketing.
Full circle... (Score:5, Insightful)
In recent years, people could beta-test software (such as GMail, Windows, and IE7) for free.
Now we are paying to become the beta-testers!!
Re:How is any different? (Score:2, Insightful)
Maybe this is why they're charging - so they actually get something from the people who would download the beta and keep using it rather than buying the full version, or dissuade them from downloading the beta at all.
They must be assuming those people are pretty cheap. They might be right.
Re:The peopl eit will deter (Score:3, Insightful)
When MS releases something they call a beta they know it's not bug free and done yet, and their people are working on it. It's mainly for the benefit of the end user to test in their environment. Like with Vista hardware makers are writing drivers, software makers are updating apps, and companies are planning for integration. They want this done (espically the driver part) before the mainstream release of the OS. So though they know there's stuff that needs wokring on, they release it as is because it's good enough for testing.
Remember with products for the enterprise it's as important that your customers are ready for what you are releasing as anything else. I'd be all kinds of pissed off if Vista rolls out, ships with new Gateways, and then it doesn't work with our setup. Well, not a problem, I can and have gotten my hands on it and done testing. Already found one major issue, our Samba server was too old to support the method for filesharing Vista was using. So we got that fixed up, though we are actually evaluating having Vista just use NFS since it has an NFS client.
That's the real point here with these betas. Give companies time to see what's comming and plan for it. They will happily kick in a couple bucks to do that. Heck another department paid for Vista simply because they couldn't get on to the download server so they just spent $40 ordering 4 DVDs. It's just not a major expense for testing. Even if they don't credit it to purchase, it doesn't matter. The money is worth it to get a test done before you've got to go live.
For big companies, it's just not the same situation as small ones. Sure if you've only got 1 tester other than the programmer, it's good to go beta so more people can test it. However if you have whole legions of testers, which MS does, it's just not necessary. Note that many large software firms don't do public betas. It's all done internally.
It's not the bandwidth (Score:5, Insightful)
Despite what we say about them, however, Microsoft is still a group of professionals. Before releasing a product, they have to make a list of every known bug and decide that every bug still in the program on release is not important enough to fix. They have to view every bug report. They are probably overwhelmed right now.
OSS (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Full circle... (Score:5, Insightful)
For me it's not about hunting bugs, it's about being educated.
Because I want to stay on top of my game, and tell my clients what to expect with the next round of software, I'd be willing to pay, too.
Re:People value things more when charged. (Score:3, Insightful)
I think that's the primary reason. Even a trivial amount of money transforms the downloader's mentality from that of "free stuff" to "paying customer." It helps them get a bigger ROI (investment being both bandwidth and time spent sifting through feedback).
Re:Why do you all hate microsoft? (Score:3, Insightful)
What?
I ask that in all seriousness, at least for Word. I haven't used Word Perfect since it came with one of those strips you put above your function keys that told you what they all did alone, with alt, with ctrl, and with shift because there weren't menus because it was a curses-like interface with no mouse. So it's possible that it's better. But is there anything else? Really? (And don't say OO Writer or I'll toss my head back laughing. OO is a fine project and improving faster than Office is, but in a couple areas that are important to me, they're still at least a version behind the version of Office uses, which is in turn two versions behind the current beta. So there's a bit of catching up to do. Maybe v.3. Here's hoping.)
Re:Full circle... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:$1.50? (Score:3, Insightful)
They could just put it up on bittorrent and it would't cost them a dime. Of course that would require common sense.
Re:How is any different? (Score:2, Insightful)
We both know that you wouldn't even hear about the SMP problem from a normal person, they would tell you its not working and follow the brief description with "but it works fine in Windows", and thats the rare percentage that would even install linux.
If you are the sysadmin of a company with linux machines, its your job to make sure its working and you would be the one receiving the phone calls or error mails telling you its not, there is no personal money on your part to lose and you are the end of the line as far as local user support goes.
As for your gaming issues, if you have installed it on a compatible system (ie, not the 64bit version of Windows) then you are entitled to support for a product you have purchased, its your personal choice to decide not to follow it up.
If the situation were similar with myself and the half life 2 engine, I would be contacting Valve and attempting to find out whats up with it.
I have found that people who pirate software are usually easy come easy go and the same comes from trying all sorts of legit open/closed source programs, if it doesn't do exactly what you want, you uninstall and move onto the next one.
Re:How is any different? (Score:2, Insightful)
But that's just me.