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.
would pay to be a beta tester for a commercial product?
And to help “offset the cost of downloading from the servers”? For a company with, what, 50$ billion in the bank?
Jesus…
SkyOS weirdos
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, it’s nothing wrong with this, except that’s beta software. Come on, you are testing their soft and you have to pay?
What’s even worst is there’s a lot of idiots out there that are going to just pay.
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.
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 …
$1.50 for the bandwidth isn’t too bad, considering iTune music charge 99 cents for a song
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)
There were five things Microsoft could learn from Linux, according to an article here a day or two ago. Now I guess there are six.
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.
Geez..this company is going to alienate the whole world with this crap eventually. MS got my last penny over 5 years ago…and I regret those. I didn’t know any better then. This is the most ridiculous thing I have ever heard.
Although it`s is a pretty dumb way of MS to explain this move, I think they are at least partially honest on this one. Think of all the computer kiddies and geeks who downloaded Vista Beta and Office Beta without generating any usable feedback to MS. I am pretty sure they just think that people who really care for Betas and are serious about testing it for THEMSELVES as well as generating feedback on bugs and features, will pay this truly nominal fee. That will not generate any profit at all for MS and people who are not serious about the Beta program will not go through the hassle of paying for it.
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.
“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 how would you define Windows? XP has been nothing but a beta since its release. Every Tues of every month for the last 10 years, there are software updates… Yeah, sounds like a beta to me; definitely not a finished product, that’s for sure…
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!
Set up a bittorrent tracker to monitor the downloads, seed the files and then spread the load among those who download?
My guess is they want to have fewer beta testers. Maybe they’re having a hard time handling all the bug reports, for example.
Then maybe they should release software with fewer bugs.
WHOOPS! Sorry – For a moment there I forgot we were talking about Microsoft!
Speaking of typical software companies and bad behavior.
Microsoft software will get progressively worse if they continue to force their quality assurance people (beta testers) to pay them. In most other companies the business pays employees to provide QoS.
Netscape made the open public beta a commonplace experience in the world of computing and now Microsoft seeks to profit from it. This is simply disgusting, an outrageous demonstration of Microsoft’s greed.
This goes to show how badly off course companies go in so-called free markets. Our businesses are no longer about making software or computers. Whatever you do, and it really doesn’t matter, it’s all about making a buck in the process and MSFT once again proves itself hollow on moral grounds.
I could even imagine some poor confused Windows users thinking they actually own the software since they ARE going to pay for it albeit a small fee. Another attempt by MSFT to offer “service” oriented software where “service oriented software” simply means find out how many times we can bill you for the same junk..
Edited 2006-07-30 00:19
You decide:
– Download a beta version of Microsoft for $1.5
– Download a stable version of OpenOffice.org for free
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.
The $1.5 is insignificant, I use Beta 1 now and it seems fine. Maybe this could be the start of an Office subscription experiment, I for one would have no problem paying a trival amount like this (even per month) for Office. I tried OpenOffice, specifically the Excel clone but it wasn’t quite good enough, could paste simple CSV data into the sheet (However Gnumeric could!).
For those of you who feel MS is the devil incarnate for charging a freaking 1.50 to download beta software, let me reach for my clue by four and admister some attitude adjustment.
OpenOffice downloads are still free.
You don’t have to download MS Office beta. You don’t have to pay 1.50 to do so. You don’t have to bitch about those who do.
Why don’t they put on P2P networks? I am usually a microsoft fan but this is STUPID. Any sane person from Microsoft seeing this? KICK THE DUMBASS who decided to charge for beta.
Thats a rather interesting move by MS. I guess its probably a move to try and thwart people who just want to play for 5 minutes and uninstall. For MS, thats just a waste of resources and also screws the guy over who is geniunely interested in the product. I’d like to see the download numbers from this and see if indeed a good amount of people have actually been deterred from downloading.
Then again, MS could see a good money making opportunity here.
… as soon as the first guy downloads it…
We all know that. So don’t complain. You don’t wanna pay? Get your usual pirate dose and search through P2P, I bet it will be there.
they probably just want all our bank details on their books. so that when it’s time to sign up for their services/utility (e.g. the OS) we’ll all be readdy to go.
“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”.”
I see it being very different, in that Microsoft are charging a nominal fee to *download* their beta software. Most Linux Distros can be downloaded for free.
Edited 2006-07-30 10:21
pay per hour to use Windows (and ms programs)?
Edited 2006-07-30 14:42
So many negative reactions. And I bet all from Linux users, or at least non-Microsoft software users. But you know what? You’re not FORCED to beta test Office Beta. And something tells me that it won’t make any difference at all in the number of testers. People interested in Office don’t give a damn to pay 1.50$ for a download.
They did the same thing for Windows XP Beta, with the exception it was more like $10 or $20..can’t remember exactly.
… to reverse the prior notion of have payed for final release products that performed like unfinished betas. As if it seems to me this has been happening for a while, it was just never described as being what it was. Win98 – SE, WinXP – SP2, WinME – …
Oh give me a break. It’s only $1.50 You can’t even by a double quarter pounder at McDonalds for that price.
You people just like to complain because it is Microsoft, and nothing they do is right by the FOSS zealots.
It’s a $1.50. And given how much traffic the Office Beta download is going to generate, I think it is justified.
And somehow I don’t think it is going to make the difference between whether you can eat that day or not.
Edited 2006-07-31 15:42