Linked by Thom Holwerda on Sat 29th Jul 2006 20:48 UTC
Microsoft plans next week to charge a nominal fee for Office 2007 Beta 2 downloads, in a move that runs counter to the practice held by most software companies. Consumers who download the 2007 Microsoft Office system Beta 2 will be charged USD 1.50 per download, beginning next Wednesday, a Microsoft spokeswoman said.
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Member since:
2005-11-10
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!