Slashdot Mirror
The Microsoft Office Rental Program
LWATCDR writes "Yes, it looks like Microsoft is going to a rental program for Office.
From the article,
'The software bundle, which also includes Microsoft's Live OneCare computer security software, will be sold at nearly 700 Circuit City stores for $70 per year.'
Well I for one will be happy to stick with OpenOffice for now. From Microsoft's point of view it means a constant flow of money. For the customer it means you only have to pay a little each year instead of a lot every few years. I don't think this will save the average user any money and I wonder about problems with 'activation.'
So will this fly, or will it give a big push to OpenOffice?
The version of Office that is more than enough for most people (Excel/Word/Powerpoint and OneNote... is there an open source equivalent of OneNote that is roughly as good, btw?) is far from a "lot". Its 140-150$ for 3 licenses. (it does have limitations though, so often you'll want open office, but its still not "a lot").
Keep in mind this subscription thing is also that: 70$/year for 3 licenses + support.
The problem with this model is that not everyone needs constant upgrades. At our office, we still you Office '97 because it does everything we need. If we are forced to pay every year for unnecessary upgrades, I believe that Open Office will be in our future.
"For the customer it means you only have to pay a little each year instead of a lot every few years."
The problem is more along the lines of, "this means MSFT can tax the consumer every year instead of the consumer using the same copy of Office they've been using since 97 or 2000 which still works just fine."
Essentially then, the decision making surface area is increased, giving more chance for OpenOffice to gain traction, and more incentive for potential licensee's to pursue other options.
I think they shot themselves in the foot with this one, but then I'm not the marketing genius that came up with it.
I see absolutely no reason to update from office 2003.
If Microsoft start down the 'future versions won't open your files' crap then I'll jump ship to OpenOffice. For now though I see no compelling reason to switch. I would imagine this is aimed firmly at corporate customers.
Yeah, I know, its not fashionable to actually like office 2003, but its a good product, I've always liked it. Besides, ever tried writing a doctoral thesis in OpenOffice? I have, it's not easy.
A learning experience is one of those things that say, 'You know that thing you just did? Don't do that.' - D. Adams
It's a valid criticism, but OpenOffice really has improved dramatically in just the last four years.
I would be worried that OO.o might get overlooked for pirated copies of MS Office. Thankfully, Microsoft has finally stopped using their own pirated software as an advertising expense. The harder they make it to pirate, the more folks will move to OO.o. After all, if all those people who were pirating it in the first place can't pirate (and still don't want to pay), what are they going to use?
If OpenOffice is so good, why do it's advocates always have to say "oh it's just as good" etc? Yet they continue to either ignore or deride the frequent comments made here that it is slow and missing a great deal of the power functionality that a lot of users need. I myself have tried it several times over the years, and compared to my old copy of Office XP and later Office 2003, it just wasn't as functional for my usage.
I personally try to avoid using Windows, Office, et al, as often as possible, but I recognize that this is a good business plan.
Microsoft Office still has the (somewhat justifiable) reputation of being the best office productivity suite available, and lowering the barrier to entry (even if the consumer pays more in the long-term) will make it easier for consumers to justify purchasing the software.
OpenOffice has no monetary barrier, but it does have three other barriers that for most people make it worse of an offer than MS Office:
1) Brand Recognition - Sun Microsystems has always focused on the enterprise, not consumers, and so few would even know they are a large multinational corp. and then those few (the geeks) would be split on whether they like or dislike them.
2) Initial Experience - The earlier releases of OpenOffice were painfully slow and did a poor job with MS Office files' formatting. Both of these are improving, but many may have already written the suite off. The formatting issue is even worse than the speed, as many people have to collaborate on documents with others who use MS Office, leading to the third barrier...
3) The Lemming Effect - Some people just want to use whatever is popular, even if they don't really know why they would want to. This psychological barrier is probably the most difficult to remedy, with disillusionment in the big player being the quickest course of action. Office 2007 has disillusioned some of its users -- unfortunately that disillusionment is based on an unwillingness to change.
Office 2007's interface is a creative new way to work on documents, (whether you think its better or worse than before) and trying to attract those who don't want change will only stagnate the OpenOffice suite into an Office 2003 clone with new ideas from other office suites (Office 2007 and KOffice, for instance) either being ignored or shoehorned in poorly when the file format has changed to reflect these new features.
So, by making it easier for end-users to use arguably the one really good piece of software they develop, which only runs on their crappy (to develop on and to use) operating system, they have at least slowed the tide in the transition of the operating system to a commodity product.
(Disclaimer: I don't really like using either Office suite whenever I can get away with it, and prefer to do everything in PDFLaTeX. I mostly just use OpenOffice Impress, which hasn't had much difficulty in reading PowerPoint files correctly.)
It won't make any difference though.
You frosty piss or the new MSO pricing scheme?
People who go for this will view MSO as a bill, not as an investment or as part of the 'computer' (that includes all hardware and software purchased at the same time, believe it or not many people don't understand the difference). When MSO is a bill, switching to Open Office will be a financial incentive: stop paying those bills! Switching someone who's already paid for MSO to OOo and claiming that OOo is free sure is a funny argument. It also makes MSO look like it has more value, as the user already paid for it. So the user already paid for the valuable item, why would he use the free one?
Lock the wife and the dog in the boot of the car.
Return one hour later.
Who's happy to see you?
Microsoft is doing something smart. The one program most often sold with a new PC is security software. Bundling their own security software and a copy of office makes sense to get users hooked early on. However why would you buy security software from someone who makes such a security hole ridden OS in the first place. While I don't keep a copy of office on my PC, I do use one on my Mac. Still, I fire up open office more than I do any Microsoft program.
The problem with this model is that not everyone needs constant upgrades. At our office, we still you Office '97 because it does everything we need. If we are forced to pay every year for unnecessary upgrades, I believe that Open Office will be in our future.
The question is whether you're paying rent or for upgrades. I know most companies lease assets, rent services and so on instead of buying. Even things that they need all the time, because they got a professional supplier that is good at what they do and charge a reasonable price, it's got nothing to do with upgrades as such. It's the difference between say a company with a leasing agreement for company cars, and you buying a car and saying "Well we still use our '97 model car because it does everything we need." The model has already been used to deliver software as a service and works in some areas.
The reason I think this is a rotten idea is that Microsoft is very dominant in office software. Rental agreements are a very simple way of making sure you get money each and every year as long as people use it, even if there's little to no innovation. The whole advantage to the consumer, and the reason there's usually some premium, is that you're not that committed. End the rental agreement, sign on someone else. In a market completely dominated by Microsoft, where's the advantage?
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Latest version is not an asset in business. Stability is number one. My employer still runs Protel 99 despite the availability of numerous upgrades. The cost of upgrade teething issues (file format incompatibilities, new bugs, ...) is too great. We would not be happy if we were regularly forced to regularly change file formats and learn new bugs.
Your 'Netflix' or whatever is one regular payment for one service. You may have 20 or 30 significant pieces of software installed on your PC. Maybe if this kind of payment covered all that software, people would find it more reasonable. They're talking about this JUST for MS Office. What if you had to pay $5 for each piece of software on your machine, per month? Starts to seem a little ridiculous now, doesn't it?
== Jez ==
Do you miss Firefox? Try Pale Moon.
I think you're absolutely correct.
This move, IMHO, has at least three major drivers:
1. Continuous revenue stream (as noted before). They know that a certain percentage will stay with them no matter what, especially businesses. They'll most likely offer reduced-per-copy licenses for corporations to keep Office as the standard.
2. "Forced" upgrades. Remember, every person who is using an older version of Office is keeping an older file format alive. That older file format being out there gives Open Source applications more time to be compatible, thus deluting MS's hold on the "Office" market.
3. "Bragging rights" What? Yes. Just like Vista's supposed sales popularity (because MS forced OEMs to install only Vista after a certain date) has been used to tout Vista as being wildly successful (even though every person I know who has ever used Vista _hates_ it), I strongly suspect that this will also be used to brag about how the new version of "Office" is so "popular" and so much "better", in an attempt to FUD about Open Office and other free applications that can do the essentials.
Because so many companies are convinced that "Office" is the only way to go, I am afraid that this will work.
As a university professor, I've already started insisting that students not use Office 2007's docx format. It's easy enough for me, because I tell them if I can't read it, I can't grade it. Once newer versions of office can't produce backward-compatible formats, I'll insist on PDFs or other open formats. I'm only one professor, but I suspect that I will not be alone in this. Beside, our university actively encourages the use of Open Office. Once I find a version that actually works on OS X (instead of crashes all of the time) I'll encourage the use of Open Office with my students, too.
I converted to OpenOffice, back when it was Star Office, and I grew to love it's quirks. It's very full featured, very nice office software. Oh also it's free. But back when CompUSA was going out of business I picked up a copy of Office 2007 to go with my then shiny new laptop for 90 bucks. First off as no doubt others have mentioned, One Note is worth 70 bucks a year by itself. There really is nothing competing with it. There's software that's supposed to be competing with it, but yeah, it's not. Oh and Office 2007 is pretty nice. Now I'll still use open office, I'm more adept at it now, and I know I'll have it as an option in perpetuity. But MS Office is a MUCH better product on productivity basis. If you're paying talented employees a substantial wage to use office software, I can see how Open Office would both be more than sufficient, and lacking depending on the circumstances. MS Office is that good. $70 a year is probably worth it for a lot of people. If you're not going to use it intensively for a number of years, the full price isn't likely to be the best deal. So yeah, from here on out, I'll probably be running both Open and MS, maybe I won't buy EVERY new version, but if One Note or apps like it keep being so unexpected and totally worth it, I might.
Really? I don't really know that it's valid to compare Netflix to your public library. It would be different if people on here were saying "Why pay for MS Office, you have notepad sitting right next to your desk"
It's astonishing how tripe like this continues to get modded up on Slashdot. First, modern 32-bit preemptive OSs don't do "TSRs". Secondly, Office hasn't had a startup helper since Office 2003. (OSA.EXE is still there but individual Office apps run it when they need to).
Also, it's pretty pathetic to see the TSR excuse trotted out to defend OO.o's slowness -- it's pretty much the same excuses we heard when Seamonkey came out, i.e., ooh, Microsoft uses "s3kr3t" tricks to make IE faster. Today, Firefox starts pretty fast, thanks to extensive tuning and optimisation and no-one needs that excuse any more. What the OO.o guys should do is take a page from Mozilla.com's book and improve their own engineering.
> It's still not fancy but it's a great workhorse, gets the
> job done, and is free.
When I need something that's not fancy and is free, I'll use Google Docs, thank you very much. Or (for offline) Abiword. Simply saying "try OO.o because it's not MSO" isn't helpful. Note that this is exactly like Seamonkey/Firefox: Seamonkey didn't get wide adoption because it was slow and unwieldly. Firefox gave users the same engine in a slimmer browser, and surprise surprise, it became very popular.
Go somewhere random
The last thing in the world I want to do is buy *insurance* from Microsoft. The thought of that is just mind warping.
Well now it'll be every year that people consider whether to 'invest' in Microsoft Office, rather than every few years and generally with a new computer purchase.
Essentially then, the decision making surface area is increased, giving more chance for OpenOffice to gain traction, and more incentive for potential licensee's to pursue other options.
I think they shot themselves in the foot with this one, but then I'm not the marketing genius that came up with it.
The problem is retail distribution - CC et. al. get paid to push MS; and getting nothing for OO or NeoOffice. Guess what they will do?
While we here are familiar with OSS alternatives (and I use NeoOffice as well as GIMP); most people have no idea what OSS is, let alone how to get it and set it up.
Take NeoOffice on the Mac - when I set it up it defaulted to saving file sin its format; which Office couldn't open. I *knew* what the problem was and fixed it; but the average user will only see that Aunt Sally couldn't open the Christmas Letter ( a blessing in disguise) and blame NeoOffice.
I like OSs; but it isn't going to catch on because it is free. It needs visibility and a compelling argument why it is better than the paid alternatives. So who will do that? My guess is the ISP's - mine already provides me with McAfee's suite as part of my subscription; adding NeoOffice or OO (perhaps even branding the splash screen with their logo) seems like a logical next step. They could partner with Sun to make it easy to install and upgrade automatically so the process is transparent to the average user. As for marketing; you're saving $70/year - and the stores can push a money making item (internet signup) with the purchase of a PC.
The question is will MS still sell boxed versions of Office? I can get the student version for $90 - $100 on sale; a far better deal than $70/year. For most of the users that the subscription targets any of the last 3 versions is more than enough for their use so a subscription makes no sense unless you want the AV service.
What I think is happening, as the article states, is MS realizes it's reached a plateau in the revenue from it's core products and users will more and more decide not to upgrade or upgrade only when machines get replaced since the current version meets there needs (my company has not yet gone to Vista or the latest Office suite - only new machines have them) which threatens their revenue stream and stock price.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
Maybe if you were an expert. 10 hours in CS3 would barely let me know where all the buttons are - and I would be $89 poorer for the effort.
Slashdot, where armchair scientists get shouted down and armchair theologians get modded up.