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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.
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?
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
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.
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.
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