Microsoft to Charge for Office Beta

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. "

Comments

How is any different?

[grolschie]

All MS products are really just betas that are tested on end users. By the time that they are reasonably robust, they drop support for them. :-)

Re:How is any different?

[LiquidCoooled]

My boss has a theory about free software (of any type, OSS/pirated/beta/given away).
He says that if you pirate software (or otherwise get it free) then you have no vested interest in making sure it works for you. If you come across a problem with something you paid nothing for, you are less likely to try very hard to get it resolved.
However, once you have paid for something the mindset becomes "why isn't my program working".

Don't know if this is the case with microsoft, but it kindof makes sense.

Re:How is any different?

[NickFortune]

All MS products are really just betas that are tested on end users

I'm just happy that they've finally settled on a realistic price point for office.

charging for a favor?

[treak007]

Beta testing is a service to the company that is having their product beta tested. This will most likely deter most people from beta testing office 2007, so the office 2007 product will suffer because of this. Gotta wonder what they are thinking.

Re:charging for a favor?

[RonnyJ]

Most people that want to beta test Office 2007 would have already downloaded it - it's been downloadable for free for over two months now.

Re:charging for a favor?

[NitsujTPU]

You're reading too much into why people download beta software.

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.

Bandwidth !

[in2mind]

Those who download the 2007 Microsoft Office system Beta 2 will be charged $1.50 per download

I wanted to joke if microsoft wants to cover bandwidth charges.....but seems thats the real reason !!

FTFA:

"Since the end of May, Beta 2 has been downloaded more than 3 million times...That's 500 percent more than what was expected," the spokeswoman said. "The fee helps offset the cost of downloading from the servers."

Not just $1.50

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

Don't forget, it's not just $1.50 -- it's also all those personal details like full name, billing address and probably telephone number that you have to hand over to MS in order for them to process the charge against your credit card. That level of detail on each downloader is probably worth in excess of $1.50 all by itself.

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.

Re:Not just $1.50

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

Some credit card companies have a small program which gives you a temporary Credit Card Number which is only usable once online.

I have been using it for years. However, those numbers primarily protect the card issuer by reducing fraud. They don't do anything to protect your privacy - you still use must use your real name, real phone number and real billing address.


And, to meander far off topic -- the numbers are good for only one merchant, not only one charge - the first merchant to bill it gets a "lock" that prevents any other merchants from billing it. So you can pay for subscription services with one charge number. You can even increase the limit and expiration date after the fact.

But, in my experience the only personally valuable use is to prevent automatic charging like you described, that's a good thing for me. For example - giganews does not offer a monthly service, you can only sign-up for an account that auto-renews each month. Since their retention is 90 days or so, I don't need continuous service. So, I give them a card# good for one month, they try to renew and fail and put my account on hold. When I am ready to start using them again, I just give them a new card# good for another month. I end up getting effectively a whole year's worth of service for about half the price by only renewing every other month.

It's also good for those magazine subs where the first year is $1 but the subsequent ones are full cover price and they would normally automatically bill you for the renewal without asking. Some of them are so shady that they won't even honor unsubscribe requests, taking them on the phone and then pretending they never got them. They can't pull that stunt if you pay with one of these numbers instead.

If this is about bandwidth costs...

[doormat]

Microsoft needs to setup a torrent. Stop being a bunch of pussies and jump on the bandwagon MS!

Re:$1.50?

[chill]

One simple reason -- to get your name, address, phone number and credit card number. What better way to get a few million high-quality mailing list additions?

Not only will you be assimilated, but you're going to damn well pay for the privilege.

  Charles

The peopl eit will deter

[Sycraft-fu]

Are probably the ones they don't care about anyhow. Sheer numbers don't help in an open beta, unless it's for stress testing a server or something. What helps are people who will give useful feedback on problems in their environment. That is generally professionals. The high school kid who downloads it because it's new and cool probably isn't going to send useful bug reports, if they send any at all. The IT staff for a large company that download it to test against their configuration are much more likely to.

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.

<stainlesssteelcap>

[celotil]

Microsoft is doing this not to offset bandwidth costs - well, maybe not just to offset bandwidth costs. They're doing this to test a newer method of buying MS software, a method that gets the general public used to the idea of continuously paying for Office, then Windows, then probably MS's entire software line.

Imagine, thirty days down the road from time of purchase of a surprisingly cheap copy of Office you get a little pop-up notice telling you that you need to re-register Office, all for the low cost of $1.50.

Every month you get this little notice, and you re-register. It's just a buck-fifty right?

Hmm. Let's say you use the same copy of Office, purchased for the low, low! price of $49.95, for two years. Every month you pay that meager $1.50.

49.95 + (24 x 1.50) = $85.95

Not much compared to the current cost for Office Retail, but what about Windows, MS Anti-virus/Spyware, Age of Empires IV...

Let's say Windows is the same price as Office - that's another $85.95 - and the Anti-virus is just marginally cheaper - $24 = 24 x $1.

$85.95 x 2 + $24 = $195.90

$195.90, every two years, paid by people who are likely to purchase their computer pre-made with Windows and Office already installed.

I have no official reason to believe this, that's just my take on the situation.

</stainlesssteelcap>

People value things more when charged.

[Dr_Barnowl]

Here's a thought ; it's elaborate marketing.

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.

• Before wednesday, there will be a mad scrabble to download it by many people who previously couldn't be bothered. By putting a deadline on the charge, MS have imposed a sense of urgency on the whole thing.
• After wednesday, anyone who pays for it to be downloaded is far more likely to give it a proper testing-out, rather than just opening a document or two and verifying that it doesn't crash. We value things more when we pay for them.

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:Why have a new version?

[pandrijeczko]

I think you will find that there are a vast number of people that use Word, indeed MS Office, completely illegally because they happen to be able to get a copy of a CD from their place of work or from a friend/relative - I personally am surrounded by computer-literate people, many with 3 or 4 PCs in the house, but *not one* of them (to my knowledge) has ever paid for MS Office or Windows XP, unless the latter was pre-installed on a new machine.

Yes, I know some people at work who do use a lot of advanced features, particularly in Excel, that are therefore justified in using MS Office specifically. However, for the level most of us have to go to, OpenOffice works perfectly well.

It always amuses me that people are very quick to criticise OpenOffice in comparison to MS Office - but then when you remind those same people that MS Office is a *commercial* office suite whereas OpenOffice is a free one and then ask them if they paid for their copy of MS Office, they tend to go very quiet.

OpenOffice has a way to go to catch up with MS Office but for 90% of normal users, even it will do far more than those users are ever likely to need - and do it in file formats based on open standards.

Why do you all hate microsoft?

[aersixb9]

They're almost giving away a product that has traditionally cost $500. Even though it's labeled beta, I'll bet that this is a pretty good version of office. They've been giving away visual studio for a while now, too. $1.50 for a software download of the most popular software product ever (after windows) is a pretty good deal, I hope more companies follow and offer cheap versions of their software for download. Perhaps software wants to be free?

On the Microsoft hatred topic...why the heck is there so much anti-microsoft sentiments, so much so that visual studio has been excluded from schools? Is it because Bill is a serious competitor against the NATO governments for leader of Earth? (As the richest (or second richest) person he controls a large number of people through paying them to do things, and can control a large amount of the earths production both directly and indirectly through financial manipulation) From what I've read of his books he's very anti-government and pro-freedom, and I'd think you'd all think he was cool.

Re:Why do you all hate microsoft?

[Duhavid]

In case you were asking a serious question...

On the Microsoft hatred topic...why the heck is there so much anti-microsoft sentiments

I started out liking Microsoft. My disaffect grew out of seeing the
installer for Windows ( I think 3.1 ) tell me that the OS/2 install that
I had on my machine was something I should remove cause it was just
taking up space. The wording was something I recall as being very
likely for someone unexperienced to decide to remove it. The years
of hearing from Microsoft that their products where enterprise ready,
when they just were not. The Stac and Novell DR Dos issues were not
handled with honor, in my opinion. The 94 consent decree, all but
ignored. The issue of coercing OEM's into the "pay for a license for
every machine that leaves the building, or pay more, regardless of
what is actually on the machine" ( how can the "free market" decide in
the face of a built in price step like that ). All the nonsense about
"this is about removing our ability to innovate" on the last round
of anti trust legal wrangling. Running Netscape out of business for
the most part, then having the gall to say that the aquisition of Netscape
by AOL was proof that there was plenty of freedom and competition. The
decision to embed IE deeper into the system, a stupid decision, excepting
for how it allowed them to manipulate things legally. Microsoft's talk
of innovation, but constantly seeing others break trail, only to have
Microsoft come in later and "take their lunch" ( then complaining about
Google taking their lunch, when the only reason there is competition
between Google and Microsoft, is because Microsoft decided to enter
Google's market niche. Which brings me to the point of Microsoft seeming
to need to enter every niche in existance, to make it so that Microsoft
is the only company left standing ( yeah, they havent succeeded, but it
isnt because they havent tried ). The reduction of innovation that the
preceeding point brings ( yeah, I'm going to invest in your startup,
but first, how are you going to keep Microsoft from taking it all from
you, if you prove this is a winner ). All the hoopla about Microsoft
innovating, when the real effect is the opposite. I could go on, but
I think I have hit the high notes.

Hate them? No, not really. But I dont like them, nor the effect that they
have had. No, that effect has not been 100% bad, but it could have been
so much better.

This doesn't seem particuarly evil.

[enosys]

I don't think Microsoft is being particularly evil here. If anything they're being pretty nice offering a free Vista beta and an almost free Office beta. For example, did Apple give out free Tiger betas? $1.50 isn't much. I first thought it was kind of ridiculous to bother charging that but then I noted the article says the beta has been downloaded 3 million times so far so it'll certainly add up.

The one thing that bothers me about this is that they haven't considered P2P. They say the price is to offset the cost of downloading from their servers. Well, why don't they offer the beta via BitTorrent for free and just charge for downloading from their servers? I reallize their cost still wouldn't be zero per download but it should be quite small and acceptable.

Beta 3

[wiresquire]

And beta 3 will cost $450 rrp. It's just they will forget to add the Beta 3 to the name and accidentally send it out to the stores

For what it's worth....

[rts008]

At least now they are calling their product a beta, and finally charging what it's worth.

But it still is not as much of a bargain as OpenOffice.

Full circle...

[mlow82]

In the good ol' days, lesser-known start up companies would pay beta testers for their valuable input.

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:Full circle...

[DavidD_CA]

It's supply and demand. There used to be very few people qualified enough to beta test. Over time, that number has grown exponentially. Now it is at the point where people *want* to beta test and in some cases are willing to pay for that opportunity.

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:$1.50?

[cbreaker]

Hmm. And here I was thinking it was predatory and illegal business practices, which they are now using to milk the customer for all they have.

$1.50? Bullshit. Unless the betas are non-expiring, it's test software. Why should we pay to test their software? If they want to test on a wide scale they need to figure it into the budget or stop and use a sign-up method.

Three million downloads? Big deal. They act like that's a lot these days. Other companies get away with it, and don't charge more.

It's just a show of how belligerent they've become to their customer base. They know they'll sell a bazillion copies of it, so they really don't give a shit.

It's not the bandwidth

[ShooterNeo]

The real cost here is not the bandwidth. The reason Microsoft is charging a fee is to greatly reduce the number of people who download the beta. Why do they want fewer beta testers? Because every bug report a beta tester sends in HAS TO BE LOOKED AT IN SOME WAY. Granted, there's automated tools so that if a particular bug leaves a certain memory signature, they can avoid looking at the thousands and thousands of identical reports of the same bug. And, Microsoft has one of the largest information worker staffs in the world.

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.