Microsoft Testing "Pay-As-You-Go" Software 202
seriouslywtf writes "Microsoft has quietly rolled out a pay-as-you-go software system in a few countries (South Africa, Mexico, and Romania) to test out how the public reacts to software rentals. Part of the current service includes a ~$15 fee per month to use Office 2003. If the service goes over well, Microsoft is considering extending the program to include other software or other countries. From the article: 'Are we moving towards a rental model for software? Despite the success of programs like Software Assurance, and the FlexGo program, it doesn't seem as if the traditional model of software sales is ever going to go away. Consumers still like the option of buying complete software packages. However, for places where the price of software keeps obtaining legitimate versions out of most people's reach, a rental program may be a useful alternative.'"
Microsoft vs. Google (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Microsoft vs. Google: Cost (Score:2)
Microsoft: $180.00/machine/year x 28 machines = $5400.00/year
At that cost from Microsoft, it takes 2.78 years to amortize the cost of a full version of Office 2007 Pro. We don't upgrade anywhere near that often. However, the cost from Google is a lot more reasonable. Add in that most of our people don't use anywhere near the full range of features in Office, the Google option makes sense.
Re:Microsoft vs. Google: Cost (Score:4, Insightful)
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I can walk into Wal-Mart and buy the student/teacher edition for $150, and that includes the msot commonly-used Office components. Regardless of the edition, they could "rent" for two years and spend the retail cost of the product. I'd rather spend the money up front and consider it a money-saving investment.
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Many days I don't touch anything office related, but on a monthly granularity I do.
Thus if I could buy 30 days of office for $15, but those days were not forced to be sequential then sure I'd consider it.
Of course google is free for the "home" version right?
-nB
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For all the flak they seem to catch, it's interesting to note that pirates want nothing but to make my life easier.
HOSTS: feeserver.microsoft.com 127.0.0.1 (Score:3, Interesting)
And suddenly, hacked "fee-verification" servers, that can be run as local host, began to appear.
what about my data? (Score:5, Insightful)
What about my data? If I agree to a "pay as you go" software model, will you allow me to create documents, data, etc., in an open format guaranteeing me free access at anytime I decide not to continue the subscription?
Will you guarantee data and documents I create can be looked at and used in other applications? What if my friends aren't subscribers?
Will you offer different levels of subscription, e.g., allow me to opt in for subscription at a lower rate for reduced features?
From the article:
I don't happen to agree with the articles inference that "paying monthly fees..., has become less abhorrent." I find it still mostly abhorrent, but rampant. The fact that it is everywhere indicates control of the market more than it indicates consumer-oriented services. When a population of users unshackled from monopoly-offered "pricing packages" and schemes freely endorse a paradigm, fine. Until then, I'm not convinced pay-as-you-go is desirable, or even makes sense.
I've not talked with many people who are happy with pay-as-you-go. This seems mostly because pay-as-you-go is usually more synonymous with "commit-to-a-locked-in-contract" for time frames longer than the current technology obsolesence cycles. That's not fair, and as the phone companies edge ever closer to becoming one company again (a la AT&T circa 1983), it's likely to not even be legal.
Microsoft stands to gain huge financials in the same way if they can pull it off, but better still for them they, much as the phone companies do, will have a better customer lock-in. Hopefully, the market will choose not to pay-as-they-go.
Re:what about my data? (Score:5, Funny)
That's the idea behind pay-as-you-go.
As you go to another product, be prepared to pay.
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As an aside, several Office products have free viewers available:
Word [microsoft.com]
Excel [microsoft.com]
PowerPoint [microsoft.com]
A Publisher option [microsoft.com]
If you use Outlook or Access, you should be prepared to pay the "price" associated with proprietary formats. It's one of those "no duh" given things that people usually accept. If you use Adobe's products, then you deal with their proprietary formats. Companies use these formats for a number of reasons, partially for efficien
Re:what about my data? (Score:5, Insightful)
Assuming it doesn't put some type of "rental flag" in the file which prevents it from working with the free viewers MS makes available.
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You could always get MSs free word viewer... or their free PowerPoint viewer... or their free excel viewer.
And for those of us not running Windows? Being able to use a viewer doesn't remove the vendor lock-in anymore than running 'strings' on a .doc does. Free PDF viewers work because few users have any reason to edit the PDFs - thats why they are made into PDFs in the first place. You can never assume that a user will not want to change or update one of their own documents. Free access to your own files means being able to do things with them beyond just looking at them.
And the idea of a spreadsheet where you
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If you're not running windows, maybe this article is of no interest to you, m'kay?
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The internet is all about interoperability! World domination ambitions aside, Microsoft doesn't give a hoot about that. And their world domination ambitions definitely give them an incentive to prevent interoperability whenever possible.
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But then again -- isn't this line of reasoning off topic? Isn't the topic the usefulness of "RENTING" office 2003? Not the inability to swap platforms? Someone asked "what if I stop renting -- will I still have access to my files?" or something to that effect. Short answer: Yes -- sort of -- with MS's free v
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Your attitude can best be summarized as "We don't want any switchers!" You are part of a shrinking minority of free software users. I recommend you keep that in mind.
Rather presumptuous (and incorrect) of you... My present employment heavily utilises MS tech and platforms, I have some MS boxen in my network at home, and still I do encourage others to switch to F/OSS. But if switching is a painful process, there's a reason for it. Personally I hope that people associate that pain with coming from a worse position, rather than moving to one, but I can appreciate that is not always the case.
Think about it in business terms - if you were Microsoft, would you want your user
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Another version is "If you sleep with the devil, don't be surprised if you wake up in hell". :)
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I know this isn't exactly what your talking about but with the FSU tie my employer has we get SPSS (normally a $900+ purchase) per computer for $25 a year. You simply can't beat that with a dirty stick. And each year we get the newest version if we want. Of course thats just what FSU gets because it buys in such bulk, most universities pay close to $100 a year.
Now MS.. thinking that near third world markets will pay $15 a month = $180 a ye
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That would be set forth in the license, wouldn't it? And TFA doesn't provide any details as to what form it would take, not that many of us could stomach reading through more than a few lines of what comes out of Microsoft's legal department without our eyes glazing over and a nasty fluid filling the back of our throats.
Put another way, and at the risk of making it sound more palatable than it is, we're not talking a purchase v. rental model
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I depends on the contract. But "pay a
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I guess not, but think of all the fun you'll have squirting your spreadsheets to girls who appreciate math. I'll be looking for your summations.
Pay as you go sucks. (Score:2)
Obsession. (Score:5, Insightful)
Their fundamental obsession is with establishing continuous revenue streams.
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The problem is that consumers are smarter than this. If they want to get a continuous revenue stream, they would have to abolish the for-sale versions. Office 2003 for $15/month? That's a four-year-old version of Office, and renting it for 10 months would cost as much as it costs to buy that ancient version. Heck, even if they were renting the 2007 version, it's would still take under two years, so unless they come out with a new one at least every two years, it costs more to rent than to buy.
Who in t
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If you could buy a house for ten months' rental---say you'd spend $300 a month to rent or $3,000 one time to buy---you wouldn't rent. If we were talking about renting a $3000 tool for $15/month, it would make sense. For a $150 program (that's what Office 2003 costs to buy), a $15/month rental is beyond absurd.
Renting a car isn't the same thing. You rent a car at $45 per day because you need something special (either in terms of features or physical location) for a very short time. With an office suite
Re:Pay as you go sucks. (Score:4, Insightful)
Everyone keeps saying, "Why do I need to upgrade when what I have works?" And software companies keep trying to come up with extra little gimmicks to convince people to upgrade, like "Look, now it spell checks words even if you type them backwards." But as software matures, the value of these new features reduces, and thus the potential profit of software companies reduces. A subscription model frees them from this concern, because if they have a subscription model they don't have to worry about producing new stuff. They can just keep charging people for the same old crap.
But we got AWAY from this stuff with the PC... (Score:2)
MS needs to come up with something that actually generates value to keep making money, to be honest. That X-Box thing not making them enough? Oh well... Shouldn't have strip-mined the market the way they've been doing for the last 10 or so years or more.
Renting for businesses (Score:2, Insightful)
For some businesses, especially startups, it could be beneficial to
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Renting is also useful for something that is infrequently used, like a DVD you don't want to buy, or to rent something with different features from the one you own, like a moving truck.
I would like to see software rentals be more like a moving truck rental than an apartment rental. I rent a moving truck when I need to do something my own car can't handle. I'd like to be able to rent a copy of ms office for those rare occasions when my regular word p
1 Year=$180 (Score:5, Informative)
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On a semi-related note, about ten years ago I bought a cable-modem when they were first becoming commonly available for consumers. $200. Everybody else I knew leased theirs for $5 a month. I just replaced it last week. Savings: $400.
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Maybe you have that kind of money, but we don't, so we usually rely on extended payments to buy "expensive" things. So, if you rent office or if you pay it in 12 payments (the usual), it's going to cost you more than the product, of course (becau
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But what about other applications? I usually find I need to use Partition Magic about once a year. Some time ago, I bought a copy but now find it unable to handle today's larger HDDs, not to mention newer OS's. I paid $60 originally, and upgrading to the latest version would cost me another $50 or so even with the rebate.
I would have rather have the option to rent the program for maybe a day or a week. This way
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I hate the whole $50-60 to run Partition Magic or similiar usually one time
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IMHO, Partition Magic is way too expensive. The $60 price point means that most people likely pirate it. If it were $10 or $20 I know I would be a lot less reluctant to pay for it (I've just gone and backed up and remade drives instead of paying for it, even though Partition Magic would have been faster; when I'm putzing on my home machine I reall
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Microsoft is glad to get $15 per month rather than $145 total from people who see $145 as "costing too much" or "I can't afford to pay all that money at once." This is the same very profitable business model as TV and appliance rental "services."
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Do you think that really matters tho? I mean, you are dealing with a country where Rent-A-Center is seen as a credit card company to some people (as if credit cards weren't draconian enough with interest rates). This is the "we want it now, and we'll pay for it later" nation, it run
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So let's assume I go and buy office pro 2007 upgrade (who doesn't already have a verion of offce?) - $329
(http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/suites/FX101 7 54511033.aspx) No more paying for it
now in year one that looks like a great deal, but lets you a general life expectancy of 5-7 year (4 years for a replacement
2003-2007 then 1-3 years to actually upgrade).
In year 5 you would have spent $900 on the software.
In year 6
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Thanks for pointing that out. Now you begin to understand the plight of the poor throughout the world, and why a free market is not sufficient to alleviate poverty in any systematic way.
Terry Pratchett explained it well when he has Watch Commander Sam Vimes contemplate the price of
Ok idea, wrong price (Score:3, Insightful)
Leveraging your user base... (Score:2)
From a personal standpoint, it doesn't make sense. Who cares if you have to spend a couple extra hours a month to save a couple of bucks? From business standpoint, it's all about the bottom line. I
the best part of all... (Score:5, Funny)
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That's what I call "Rent-to-0wned".
Pay as you go versus free? (Score:2)
One of the reasons I dropped WordPerfect and steered clear of Office was that it WAS pay as you go. Each time there was an upgrade I was a sucker and kept buying the new version. I switched to OpenOffice so that upgrades didn't cost money and now use Google Docs. I can't imagine needing to go ba
Google's business model on apps. (Score:5, Insightful)
MS just wants a continual revenue stream for no additional effort. The problems they face as business is that their product very much fits with a purchase-once and use model. Once you have the software, i.e. when microsoft's development and delivery have succeded, MS is doing nothing by default. Sure, you get better support, but honestly how many times does the average person who *is* entitled ever bother to call for help? MS wants to have customers pay even if the customer is causing no work on MS's part, even if the upgrades they would provide mean nothing.
Google is very different. The most blatant thing is client independence, no need to maintain local software. But what really is interesting in terms of cost is you offload a lot of your data reliablity costs (backup) to the third party. By providing every remotely interesting thing from top to bottom, it's easy and an average person would never realize the implications of their data being backed up, how many disks a week are dying, etc etc. It's a logical extension of the server hosting model, and very much lends itself to a subscription model that all companies would like to follow in selling product.
MS New Business Logan Leaked (Score:3, Insightful)
~
Pay and Go (Score:3, Funny)
Not exactly a surprise (Score:5, Informative)
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I remember saying [...] that people would spend more money on software than on hardware. We certainly haven't passed that milestone by quite a margin.
We passed it long ago - especially once you move outside the realm of commodity consumer software. We have a whole office here full of AU$2000 PCs running software that has an AU$10,000 per-seat licensing cost.
Heck, even our RHAS licenses cost us more over the lifetime of the machine than the hardware itself, for most machines.
Why Google or Microsoft? (Score:3, Interesting)
As long as we're talking about an open standard there's no reason that
other (free) players like Ajax9 won't become the ultimate winners.
And neither Microsoft or Google has a webtop that's half as slick as
DesktopTwo (which uses a very slick browser-based Java version
of OpenOffice).
The pressure is now on MSFT to be compatible with other players. The
game is certainly on, but its not just between Google and MSFT.
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I agree however that an online office application that is also lightweight on the client side would be very well accepted. A lot of people are moving or have moved on to handheld and other low-power, low-perfo
Leveraging The Goog's 2/22 press release (Score:3, Interesting)
Enter "I'm a terrorist" in Google Apps 5000 times.
Enter "I'm a terrorist" in MS Office 5000 times.
See what happens.
Re:Leveraging The Goog's 2/22 press release (Score:4, Funny)
Advertisments for cheap explosives show up in the margin the next time you open the document. If you click on one of the links, Google gets paid a few cents.
Enter "I'm a terrorist" in MS Office 5000 times:
Clippy offers to show you how to look up synonyms for "terrorist". He then proceeds to reformat your list as he pleases.
So?
Mod up - funny (Score:2)
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I. HATE. MONTHLY. FEES. (Score:2)
I avoid them whenever possible. I hear people talking up TiVo or NetFlix, but you've got to pay a stinking monthly fee. You can't pay as you go or pay for use. That's why I use the iTunes store as my TiVo. If I miss a show, I'll buy THAT EPISODE from iTunes. That way, if I don't use it for a month, it doesn't cost me the same as if I use it all the time.
If there is a service I'd like to use that forces me to pay a monthly fee, I'll spend a few hours trying to get the same functionality without the fee.
If
O RLY? (Score:2)
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That was a legacy switch, and was primarily made to reduce said monthly fees.
My wife requires the phone number for work, but we found out we could switch to Vonage and keep our number. If we didn't need it, I'd have dropped the phone service a long time ago.
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Oh No Clippy! (Score:5, Funny)
You WHORE!
<sob!>
look for this only where OpenOffice is gaining (Score:2)
It's only going to put a small ding into Microsofts profits and it'll help slow down the cascade to OSS.
Remember, 30% of Microsofts profits come from MS Office so they can not afford to cut
Might be good for some people. (Score:2)
I think the people with the biggest problem with this will be people
Citizenship involves Fairness and Kindness (Score:2, Interesting)
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Non-airlines have had a devil of a time tranlating this to thier businesses. The airlines have absolutely no danger that the $200 person will try to sell his seat to someone else
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eh? so if i earn nothing, or 1$, i can get free or essentially free services? this makes no sense at all. why should someone who earns more money have to pay more for the same service? i dont get it. it just adds another step to selling something. now i have to verify a buyer's income? i also dont think it is right that the u.s. of a has a graduated income tax system. if we have to have an income tax, everyone should pay
Office 2003 student edition (Score:2)
Sayonara Redmond Dudes.
out of most people's reach (Score:2, Insightful)
Consumers still like the option of buying complete software packages. However, for places where the price of software keeps obtaining legitimate versions out of most people's reach, a rental program may be a useful alternative.'
Wouldn't the obvious solution be to lower prices? Its like MS is trying to work around a problem that is of their own doing. I really think what contributes most to piracy is when people feel the price of something is more than the value they get from it. But I think MS's big problem is they don't want to figure out how to do development in a more efficient productive way that would let them charge less. They are an icon of what I call american corporate socialism, inefficiency and unreasonableness f
Same Microsoft (Score:2)
Let's say my gross average monthly wage in the U.S. is $4000. (not even a decent salary in urban America) 6% is a whopping $240.
I won't ever deny Microsoft the capacity to make products/generate revenue despite my unfavorable attitude towards the company as a whole. But I don't see how they can make pay-as-you-go work at the prices they demand for their product
Will it work? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:World of WORDcraft! (Score:2)
Please remember to feed your search mutt regularly or his loyalty will drop and he will start giving you less useful results.
Isn't that just racketeering? (Score:2)
Misleading name (Score:2)
When it involves Microsoft it should be called "pay and pay and pay as you go."
Please make a note.
They already did this (Score:2)
Seems like "Pay-As-You-Go" to me anyway. At least that's what we're forced to do unless we w
It's all about the upgrades (Score:2, Interesting)
No thanks. (Score:2)
I experienced rental with Office XP (e.g, Activation), and it sucks.
My solution now? Unless I need a macro, it's OpenOffice for me, otherwise, Office 2000 running under Crossover Office.
Renting software -- are you kidding?
Price making it unavailable? (Score:2)
Rather than buying a package once for, say, $250 and using it for
Seems rather expensive (Score:2)
The only way I would ever consider a long term payment program would be if I could own the software at the end of the year or whatever. Hell, if Microsoft were smart they might even be able to charge MORE in the long run. After all, Americans are used to paying interest for things, and spending more over the long r
Closed Source Software is Already Pay As You Go (Score:2)
Full Circle (Score:2)
It wasnt such a bad business ( and security ) model after all was it.
And the poor get poorer (Score:4, Interesting)
In every case, the person pays what they can afford right now, but ultimately ends up paying more over time. It's interesting that such a strategy is being test marketed in countries seen as needing a financial "break". This is a tactic that essentially takes advantage of those who can't afford up front costs.
Almost makes sense. (Score:2)
My first thought was that it might be nice to be able to "rent" Office by the month. For example, you're working on a contract and you need to be able to exchange documents with other folks but only for the duration of the contract. Paying for the use of Office for a short time almost makes sense.
But then I remembered: Uh, wait... I don't use Windows any more. What would I run their stinking software on? Now I'm sure that somewhere within Microsoft -- behind locked doors, heavily armed guards, and a radio
I am happy with rental software... (Score:2)
As long as it's Open Source. That way I'm not locked into paying a particular company to use my software for some arbitrary period of time. With Open Source I'm clearly paying a 'rental' fee for continued work by the company that makes the software.
Microsoft has two major problems. First, I'm locked into their software by the data. And that's never going away no matter how much people talk about 'open' formats. The only way it will go away is if Microsoft abandons its current Office product line becau
LoL (Score:2)
Greed (Score:2)
However, for places where the price of software keeps obtaining legitimate versions out of most people's reach, a rental program may be a useful alternative.
So basically this translates as: "We make up an arbitrary price for software, which costs next to nothing to mass produce. If you can't afford this high price, we'll charge you a smaller amount on a recurring basis, so that in the long term you end up paying more than other people who have more money than you do." How thoughtful of them.
Ah what a better way to show vendor lock in (Score:2)
Tom
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They have to react to Google's announcement yesterday with an unworkable plan. This is how they always react to the innovations of others.
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I'm also extremely annoyed Microsoft is buying so many of the medium business accounting packages. (Dynamics, Navision)
Its an application space that REALLY needs
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Oh, and an interesting tidbit - Dynamics used to run on Macs, not just Windows.