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Mac OS 10.0

Difference is - Apple needed the money, Microsoft honestly don't. They just want to wedgie in "micropayments" to help it on its way to one day being normal for everything.

Mac OS 10.0

Difference is - Apple needed the money, Microsoft honestly don't. They just want to wedgie in "micropayments" to help it on its way to one day being normal for everything.

Also, remember that Apple later offered the released version of 10.0 to all beta testers at reduced price (by the same amount they paid for the public beta).

Wasn't Mac OS X 10.1 a free upgrade afterwards?

Do you want Office 2007 for $1.50, fine, I'll buy it at full price and resell it to you for that amount.

Well, for linux, it is pretty much an endless beta test

The linux 2.6.x is probably more stable than Office 2007 beta 2. Also, no one in their right mind would use Office 2007 beta 2 on a production machine, while linux is being used on servers and workstations with very little downtime.

Edited 2006-07-30 05:52

You are comparing a Kernal with an Office Suite. Please stop and re-think your thesis.

No one is forcing you to pay and downlaod this. Its all voluntary. You choose to or not, and if you choose to you pay a very small fee for the service. I don't see it being much different than those that charge for linux distros just "for the price of the CD".

`Well, it's nothing wrong with this, except that's beta software. Come on, you are testing their soft and you have to pay?`

You've been beta testing software for Micro Sloppy since 3.1 and NT 3.5.

As P.T. Barnum said ...

considering iTune music charge 99 cents for a song

Errhh... Most of that 99 cents goes to the music labels, bandwidth is cheap and it is practically free if they utilize Bit Torrent or similar technology.

Bandwidth is NOT cheap, especially when you have to pay people to make sure the servers that bandwidth is running through don't have any problems.

Bandwidth is NOT cheap, especially when you have to pay people to make sure the servers that bandwidth is running through don't have any problems.

Clearly you have not looked at Microsoft funded TCO research.

Seriously though. I just thought the *nominal* payment was just a way of validating people. Who would otherwise made up their details.

I think you are right on that. And also it will cut back the number of downloads.

Or it will bring them in 4.5 million dollars. (Based on the 3 Million people who downloaded the last version)

Charge for the price of a CD and shipping costs?

A small company called canonical charges you nothing for sending you linux CDs. And you telling me the "not so small" company microsoft needs to be payed for downloading a beta?

Yes, we all know Canonical ships for free. Many others don't. Go to Ebay, plenty of linux cd's on there that charge for shipping. That was my point.

They probably exist, but I'm not personally aware of any Linux distribution projects/comapnies or Linux distribution distribution services (i.e. LinuxCD) that charge a nominal fee for downloading the software. Physical media, yes. Download, no. And usually this doesn't apply to betas or release candidates.

I'm sure this small fee won't have a large impact of the demand for this Office beta. Perhaps the only demographic that would refuse to pay the $1.50 is the free software crowd that just wants to take a quick look so that they can complain about the new interface more effectively. The software review sites and the MSDN crowd will gladly fork over the pocket change, and that's really all Microsoft cares about.

But, just for argument's sake: They take almost $8B per year in profits out of $11B in Office-related revenue. They can afford to pay each MS Office developer twice as much and charge half as much for each Office license, and still take a hefty profit. MS needs to offset upload bandwidth expenses? Right... and I see you're also interested in this *barely used* bridge I don't need anymore.

Somehow I don't think this money is going to the maintainer of SymphonyOS, who can't afford to pay his electric bill.

I'd mod you up to 5 if I could, but am only allowed one mod per post now.

I can't even begin to imagine what MS's bandwidth bill is per month.

You got it right, sir.
Kids, we can stop screaming now.

I do agree that would be smarter to distribute it with BitTorrent if the issue was about bandwidth only. But I don't see Microsoft using "pirate" technology, as they would probably call it.

So by your definition any software that has patches on a regular basis is beta software? Well that would include almost all operating systems and softweare.

No, actually it hasn't. They used to release hotfixes when they were ready, and then everyone complained about that, now they release them all at once one Tuesday every month.

And what does releasing updates have to do with beta or release status?

How many kernel patches are there for Linux each month?

The updates to Windows are much much more than just kernel patches.

What the user was trying to say is that there seems to be as many updates to Windows XP (Which has been in gold status for almost 6 years) as there are in most major versions of Linux!

This just goes to prove once again that MS is not about software and customers but all about marketing and making money!

You telling me that with $50 Billion in the bank they don't have the bandwidth of a small country?

I could see if they just came out and said "We just want people who are serious about testing out the beta to download it, so we are going to charge a fee" Ok, that makes sence. But to say they need the money??? LOL! Silly!

So by releasing patches for the 6yr old OS it brings you to the conclusion that it's all about marketing? That makes no sense at all.

Just because someone has $50billion in the bank (which they actually no longer have, as they paid out dividends, bought a whole bunch of stuff, etc...) does not mean they can just spend that money frivelously. Bandwidth is expensive, and to spend it on something for a bunch of people to download for free who probably won't even report back on it, and may even crack the timebomb on it, is just absolutely rediculous.

Have you ever run a business? Have you ever been in chrage of, at least, finances for a business? I would say no.

Oh yes, and btw, ALL companies are about making money. That is the entire point of a company. If the company that is not about making money does NOT exist.

First of all as typical of most MS supporters you talk first and don't read! Someone wrote:

"Well, for Linux, it is pretty much an endless beta test and a bunch of idiots in your definition are investing time to do the test."

And so I wrote that Windows XP has been gold for 6 years and because of the amount of changes, holes and patches it might as well still be in beta also!

Any way, I have my own company and we consult to the US government. And I actually make good money at it. And yes having a business is about making money, but there is making money and there is making ungodly amounts of money! And if you look at most big American companies they make lots of money by doing one of 5 things (Or all five

1. Screwing their customers (Microsoft)
2. Screwing their employees (The Airlines, Walmart, GM)
3. Using child labor or extra cheap labor (Nike, Walmart)
4. Screwing everyone and the environment (Exxon-Mobil)
5. Screwing other companies to stay on top (Walmart, Microsoft)

Ms is just thinking about making money, it makes no sense what they are doing. If you fear that people wont report back on the betas (Which MS knows they wont because MS has been in business 30 odd years) they why release to the public at all. The people who do report back on the betas have MSDN accounts anyway, so just release to them.

Also your reason "Bandwidth is expensive, and to spend it on something for a bunch of people to download for free who probably won't even report back on it, and may even crack the timebomb on it, is just absolutely rediculous." Is ridiculous! Ummmmmm, at a $1.50 people who are in the business of cracking software are not gonna keep paying $1.50. They gonna pay once and share! What they are doing is not legal anyway! Shoot it will cost $1.50 to do the credit card transaction for that $1.50 LOL!

No, as always things like this hit the people who just want to see what the software is all about, normally curious customers! They will pay for the cracker to crack and for the hacker to hack. They always do! MS is cheap and also trying to get people to pay for their R&D as always!

Also if you pay attention to MS. They made the $50 billion they had by screwing investors (Should of put that on my list) and not paying dividends! They dividends they have been paying out, accusations they have been making and also legal costs have almost all been coming out of current operating expenses. That is why they made about $11.80 billion in revenue last quarter but only $2.06 billion in profit!

They still have most of their $50 billion! Bums! LOL!

Then maybe they should release software with fewer bugs.

WHOOPS! Sorry - For a moment there I forgot we were talking about Microsoft!

OpenOffice and the word "stable" just don't mix well

This slow and crash-prone software is a big shame, it remind me of the Windows 3.0 era with the infamous "General Protection Error" dialog boxes popping up now and then.