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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?
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
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.
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.
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.