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?
I'm pretty sure that's me, and I use Google docs. It's a natural since I have never bought my own printer in twenty years. When I need to print something, I do it at work, or the public library or Kinko's. So tell me why I'd pay $70 per year for Word?
Oh, yeah, it's not easy to pad these out to 120 characters.
http://openoffice.org/ has already been mentioned heaps of times. I won't bother saying anything more about it.
This is old news, Microsoft has been wanting to rent software for ages.
Two types of customer. The home user is used to renting software such as Virus Checkers and the like. Yes, it isn't really renting as such, but whatever. Microsoft really just needs to convince them that it's a good deal, and they are done. However, considering that many people don't have access to broadband (yes, not everyone lives in a city, and some people are still too poor to pay even if they can access it), I wonder how they will distribute the updates. Actually, do you get to keep the software when you stop paying? Previously it stopped working (you could only view the documents). Is that such a great thing for home customers?
Business customers would probably love this though. At least some of them. Pay less, always get the latest version. Except they got screwed over with something like this before already, they didn't actually get a new version for ages (I can't remember the details).
Oh yeah, one final thought, what about setting up your own server to pretend to be the MS server and say, "yes, you're a legit copy" to any software that queries it? And/or introduce a crack into the system so that it doesn't shut down?
I wank in the shower.
The support thing is key. Like it or not, MS is going to be in the support business big time and needs to find ways to profit from support that are simple, easy and cheap for the end user. Hell, 90% of the time all they need to do is put someone on the phone that understands how to use the software and that's all. Software can be free but on-demand support will always cost you.
I have mod points. The reign of terror begins now.
Yep, Office 97 is adequate IMO, but when you buy in new machines they often come with newer versions of office, so those with 97 start whining because their interface isn't as shiny, or features like shared email folders are harder to access. Or, worse, they actually need a newer version to cope with the files that those with newer versions are churning out. Yes you can save to older formats, but most people will just regard that as a PITA, especially when it comes to things like PST files..
If someone came up with a good free shared email/calendar alternative to Outlook then that would be awesome. I meant to try out the latest version of thunderbird, still haven't got around to it.. basically Exchange and Outlook are quite a good solution. I definitely don't want to get rid of Exchange right now as it means road warriors can easily access their email through their phones without having to deal with Crapberry network issues all the time etc, but if Outlook was dethroned then OpenOffice would be a very viable solution for a lot of our desktops. And that also means that Linux would be quite viable in some cases too :) I can dream at least..
Thankfully only 2 of our machines have been ordered with Vista so far - one by our MD, and one by an insubordinate IT assistant who needed a multimedia spec machine for presentations, and it doesn't even work for it - why do Dell laptops always seem to have strange problems with projectors??. If MS keep forcing Vista on businesses then I'd make a concerted effort to replace as many of our machines as possible with FOSS alternatives though, rather than having to get Volume licensing stuff for all new machines just so that we can downgrade. And that's only if drivers are even available for the newer stuff - for some new Dells like the one I mentioned, you can't! Perhaps there are some hacked drivers out there that will allow me to 'downgrade' it though..
which is totally what she said
It works out to less than $7 per month--less than what most people are paying to "rent" Netflix or "rent" cable TV. You can find free "open source" equivalents of both Netflix (most public libraries have a selection of videos) and cable TV (over the air). Somehow /.'ers are appalled at paying for software, but think nothing of buying electronics or other toys.
The cost of office for a home user is relatively cheap (about $120 to buy) or $7/month to rent, and the best that can be said for OO is that it's "almost as good" as Office (like over the air TV is "almost as good" as cable).
If the home users want to bring home work, full Office compatibility is really worth a couple of bucks. FYI, most corporate licenses allow home use at no or minimal cost.
OpenOffice works, yes, but if you need to create MSOffice documents would you trust OO? I've tried saving my resume in MSWord 97 format but when I bring it up in the real MSWord it doesn't look as it did in OO. If I didn't have a copy of Word as well I wouldn't have known the difference and would have been sending out crappy looking resumes. For me, this is where the rubber meets the road; until OO's compatibility (of Word's main features) is perfect, or many more people start accepting OO documents, OO won't be a mainstream tool for me. I would love to just use PDFs but many places don't accept them.
On a related note, I've tried OOCalc's graphing feature and the wizard was broken and the resulting chart was unusable. That was roughly a year ago.
I think the rental program will be a big hit with groups that need to open an office and operate for a relatively short period of time. Perfect example: Campaign Offices. The offices are only needed until November, then they will shut down for 3 years and kick it back up in 2012. They can save 50-60% by renting office for one year instead of purchasing it.
Reading code is like reading the dictionary - you have to read half of it before you can go back and understand it.
IANAL but isn't bundling their anti-virus with Office a pretty blatant use of their monopoly to take over other markets?
Or has the government not officially ruled/admitted MS has an Office monopoly, only an OS monopoly?
Now they can prove that the end-user doesn't "own" their software but are licensed, getting around first-sale doctrine and all the rights contained therein. Their lawyers must love it.
I think it's a pretty sweet idea. Especially if they do reduced rates for students. I won't *want* MS office at home when I finish my course... so why buy the suite for hundreds when I could pay £15 for 3 years...
While most people here are commenting about whether renting is better than buying Office or using OpenOffice, strategically, this has the effect of getting OneCare onto more machines. I'm not commenting whether McAfee or Symantec is better, but isn't MS up to their old tricks by leveraging Office to get more OneCare sales? Unlike Netscape and Internet Explorer, you can't load two security packages onto the same machine without seriously affecting performance. I expect both companies to start complaining about antitrust implications.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
I know that for some people 150 dollars isn't a lot. Certainly not the 70 dollar rental scheme.
I happen to live in Arkansas, an "economically depressed" area. Wages aren't even a fraction of what you see in New York, Chicago, or Los Angeles.
People raising families think that 150 bucks IS a lot of money.
If that doesn't convince you, consider all the people outside the United States. There are people in this world who don't see 150 dollars in hard cold cash in a MONTH.
That is one of the driving forces behind open source (and piracy too,for that matter), after all. A hundred dollars IS a lot of money to a large majority of the people on this earth.
If I had 150 dollars or more to spend on an OS even before I could consider spending another 150 bucks on an office suite, I would send that money to an open source developer rather than a greedy corporation like Microsoft.
...as long as they figure out reasonable, flexible and innovative rental terms that don't end up being way more than buying outright.
I'd love to be able to install $Expensive_Application and then buy blocks of hours that I could use the program. There's no way I can ever pay off the cost of, say, Adobe Design Suite CS3 bought outright, but if $100 would buy me 10 hours of use of the most current version, it'd totally be worth it versus spending $89 on some crippled version or a knockoff that bombs out or doesn't work right.
So the user already paid for the valuable item, why would he use the free one?
This may seem like a silly argument (the money's already lost so you should just stop suffering with MSO and switch to OOo) but when I was doing PC repair in university, many people didn't want their Norton/McAffee/MSO/Other crapware swapped for better free alternatives because they "already paid for it." I know that doesn't make one lick of sense but that's the Average Joe's thinking. Nowadays Ubuntu is dead reliable and easier to use than Windows (especially Vista), and even though the "AAAAHH scary Linux! Only geeks can use that!" feeling is wearing off, I bet if I tried to switch people to it they'd say something along the same lines, and continue catching (or if I've already fixed up their Windows installation with proper security, intentionally installing) spyware, suffering total operating system breakdowns and clicking allow/deny once every 15 seconds. Because they "already paid for it."
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Unfortunately, the version of Office (Home and Student) that is included with Equipt does not include Outlook either.
Which is a damn shame, because Outlook is a nicer client than Thunderbird.
I used Outlook as my primary client for about five years - and hated it most of the time. The interface is very heavy and noisy: too many buttons, menu options, and visual controls that I don't want to use. The contact list didn't work well or reliably, nor did the filtering. Even checking email was a pain in the ass: often it would inexplicably fail to find my mail server, or would tell me that no new mail had arrived when there were several new messages...
My irritation grew so great that I overcame the transition barrier and switched to Thunderbird about a year ago. I've loved it thoroughly ever since - it is an outstanding mail client.
I have been a little disappointed that Tbird hasn't had any new versions in a while, and Sunbird/Lightning (the calendaring component) needs a fair amount of work. Still, having thoroughly experienced both the Microsoft suite and the Mozilla suite, I'll take the latter any day... not even factoring in the costs of each product.
And now that Microsoft is belatedly leveraging its monopoly power to force the world into rentware, I'll be giving OpenOffice a spin.
Even after using MSOffice for - wow, close to fifteen years now - I am much less married to it than Microsoft thinks I am.
Computer over. Virus = very yes.
I understand the Excel/Word/Powerpoint combo; I see them often. I find it interesting that the other application you need is the one I have NEVER seen in a commercial/business setting, not even as a personal copy. As a consultant, I have access to a variety of clients' systems in the course of my work and as a geek, I discuss software with many people; I've never seen anyone using Onenote. I played with an early trial version and found an okay app. On Windows, it is easily surpassed by Evernote. As previously mentioned, Zoho and Google have on-line notebooks that serve well. Notescribe is another low cost (time-limited) shareware alternative, and there are several freeware programs that I've seen that are similar. Personally, I simply extract the information I need and put it into Palm Desktop, which I've used for twelve years; that way, the info is also available to me when 'out and about'. I don't want to deal with the data in the original format; if I did, I'd keep a copy of the original file! Others have mentioned the Linux apps.
BTW, the pricing you give is WAY out of line from reality for many of us; the license is for "qualified Educational Software and Educational computer/pc games users only". Guess what; Adults need not apply.
If I am not for myself, then who will be for me? If I am only for myself, what am I? If not now, when?
Your universal rules of "knowledge about computers for use at home": need a little bit added to them.
- Buy the cheapest machine that has all the bits you know you need.
Some of very low cost system and or parts are POS with carp parts in them and some of them have little to no room for upgrades.
Also low cost scenes / displays are poor some have VGA only and you don't want that.
- Never pay for any "extras" that you don't see yourself using at least once a week (scanners, faxes, webcams, skype phones, etc.).
Now days most scanners are part of a AIO printer.
- Never pay anything more than the base hardware / OS / software price (no warranties, insurance, support, installation etc. except possibly if it's a very expensive laptop).
- Don't sign up with the bundled ISP's, or the first one you see on television. Ask a friendly local expert what they would recommend. They WILL be able to save you time and money with their recommendation in the long run. (PLEASE: No more AOL!)
Some of the bundled ISP are cable and DSL ISP now days and you see them on television as well And with cable you may only have 1 ISP to pick from.
- In use, never, ever click on any dialog that you don't understand. If it's in your way, learn how to move windows offscreen. Maybe even make a printout and ask your friendly computer expert about it later.
- Never pay for updates, upgrades or "new versions" of anything (you can invariably just carry on with the old versions, updates for free, or replace with a free equivalent), no matter what the software tells you. Let the automated things on it keep it updated for you.
Not 100% true some software stops working / does not 100% when you are still useing the old versions / they stop updating them.
- If it starts to slow down, it is NOT "just because it's old", just get someone to clean it for you and slip them a twenty. The computer will NEVER change its core speed on its own - you have installed stuff that can be removed. Replacing it with a new computer will of COURSE make it seem slower in comparison, but so will a good cleanup.
Not 100% there is os update / app update / driver update bloat and other stuff that makes your system slower over time you system is still at the same speed but the software needs more power then it use to need.
- Give your friendly computer expert first dibs on anything you throw away but don't foist it upon them without asking first. They might not have a need/use for it.
This begs the question... should OO.o investigate putting their software on a DVD in nice packaging, and put it on CC/BB shelves for $5? (Just enough $ to cover the packaging/distribution) Honestly, everyone I know is shocked and pleased to learn that they could have "Office for free!" when I tell them about OO.o. If it were on store shelves, it would really take off.
As someone who "manages" a small office (30 computer) infrastructure in my spare time... this subscription concept is a great idea. I'll jump on it in a hurry.
No more figuring out which key I can use when we replace a computer, no more wondering where the cd for the edition that matches is. Same version of office on everyone's desktop... cause really, is it worth it to upgrade office 2000 for the desktop that uses it four times a year. Not to mention the budgetary issues of $2100 a year is a lot easier than $7000 every once and awhile.
I see all sorts of good from this for the medium sized business who just doesn't have the resources to be managing their software correctly and for who office is a secondary application.
OneNote is great. It's got built-in tools that allow you to screenshot anything you've got open and throw it in as part of your notes. You can also import PDF's and take notes over them. This is great with a tablet. You never print lecture notes. You just import them into OneNote and write over the top of them. If you need a hard copy you can print the lecture notes with your hand written notes included.
You are using English. Please learn the difference between loose and lose; they're, there, and their; your and you're.
You should look at getting eOpen volume licenses - only one key to have to track.
https://eopen.microsoft.com/EN/default.asp
Fsck the millennium, we want it now.
Millennium Crisis Line: 0890 900 2000 [calls cost 50p/min]
You know, I only take exception to the "greedy corporation"... I'm kind of tired of hearing all this anti-corporate tone everyone has. I honestly can't stand MS's politics on a lot of issues. I don't like some of the decisions they've made up to this point... a lot of the anti-competitive behavior in particular. That said, there is absolutely nothing wrong with someone, or a company wanting to make money, or not wanting people to pirate their work.
... I liked MS Office 2000 a lot, wish they hadn't messed with it so much.
I know I may well get modded down for this, I just wanted to say something. For the record, onenote is probably the single thing I use in office most on my desktop, that and outlook + exchange works really well. At least at work. At home I'm a big thunderbird fan, since it handles my multiple accounts better than any other email program I've used. I use OOo for my office needs at home, even though I have msdn access, I prefer OOo to office XP/2003/2007
As for the $70 a year, it's really not a bad deal for those that need office. Now if MS would just narrow down their OS skews a bit... I don't see the point of so many versions of Vista... I would also love to see a light server version of their OSes gain a little more traction... Right now the web edition works as a pretty decent developer platform, over vista at least.
Michael J. Ryan - tracker1.info
Actually, with the new Office apps it's not. We're almost entirely WinXP but a few Vista machines have crept in lately - mine is one of them. By default of course Office saves to the new format - but I've only had to tell Excel once, and now every new workbook is created in 'Compatibility Mode', and saved as such when I hit Ctrl-S. It won't even let me go beyond the 65,535 row limit. It's not like in the past when you had to remember to do 'Save As' and pick the right version every time, which really was a pain.
As a matter of fact I really like the new Office. I'm not usually an MS apologist, but here they've done a good job. Redesigning the interface on Word might have made many people scream, but seriously: it's made my mother start using layout properly. It's exactly what all us LaTeX geeks have been complaining about for decades, and it's fixed. That deserves applause.
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.