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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.
before people realize that OpenOffice works just as well AND is free.
Of course so does a pirated copy of MS Office.
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."
would I want to rent an office in Redmond? I live in Virginia, you insensitive clods!
Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.
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.
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?
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
This has been mentioned before but running on the assumption you aren't trolling I'll update you a bit. OO.o does still have some bloat issues (primarily during launch, once it's running it's very quick). However, you can turn on an option that loads a small TSR on boot-up which eliminates that lag. Admittedly, it's a bit kludgy, but to be honest, I'd wager MS only gets away with a fast start to Office because part of it's core is in the OS so it seems a fair trade.
:)
As a side note, the startup process has improved enough that I don't bother with the TSR on newer machines but for the very impatient it's a nice feature to turn on. Give the latest OO.o a spin and see what you think. It's still not fancy but it's a great workhorse, gets the job done, and is free. What more could you want?
I've had it with your closed, proprietary OS and file formats!
I'm getting an iMac with iWork.
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.)
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.
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
At our office, we still you Office '97 because it does everything we need.
Did you use Word 97's grammar check whilst writing this post? :-)
== Jez ==
Do you miss Firefox? Try Pale Moon.
Shouldn't the Billborg icon be replaced now? Say with a Ballmerborg, or maybe a Ballmerchair. Or even a chairborg.
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.
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.
OK, run that last line by me one more time...
MS introduce an alternative licensing model for their customers. Presently, customers choose to buy MS Office even at its current cost. Wise customers in certain circumstances may choose to rent it instead, saving themselves money.
Thus, Office, on the whole, is cheaper than it was. And in specific cases is no more expensive.
These people have chosen MSOffice over OpenOffice, and now it costs them less. And you're suggesting that because MSOffice is cheaper, they'll stop using 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.
Included in this package is not only Microsoft Office, but also Windows Live OneCare among other services. Let's see how the math breaks down over the next few years:
Traditional Purchase Model
-Microsoft Office 2007 Home and Student - $150
-Windows Live OneCare (with one year subscription) - $50
-Next year's OneCare subscription - $50
-Following year's OneCare subscription - $50
-Microsoft Office 2009 Home and Student - $150
Total for three years: $450
Under the new Equipt Model
-Microsoft Equipt (first year) - $70
-Microsoft Equipt (second year) - $70
-Microsoft Equipt (third year, includes upgrade to Office 2009) - $70
Total for three years: $210
Now, this is assuming that the user continues to subscribe to OneCare and eventually would upgrade to Office 2009 - however, assuming they do, the savings are pretty clear. Since this is being offered side-by-side with the traditional purchase model, I think this is a good move by Microsoft. Also, there is no alternative anywhere in the software universe that comes close to OneNote.
"It's a reverse vampire...they....they crave the sun!"
...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.