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The Hidden Costs of Microsoft's Free Office Online

Posted by Soulskill on from the free-ain't-cheap dept.

Michael_Curator writes "Despite what you've heard, the online version of Office 2010 announced by Microsoft earlier this week won't be free to corporate users. Business customers will either have to pay a subscription fee or purchase corporate access licenses (CALs) for Office in order to be given access to the online application suite (Microsoft already does this with email — the infamous Outlook Web Access). But wait — there's more! A Microsoft spokesperson told me that customers will need to buy a SharePoint server, which ranges from $4,400 plus CALs, or $41,000 with all CALs included, if they want to share documents created using the online version of Office 2010."

2 of 174 comments (clear)

  1. Google charges too, for corporate Docs accounts by themeparkphoto · · Score: 5, Informative

    Google has paid services too with similar pricing models. While there is a free "Google for domains" that gives you docs, etc, on your domain, there are additional paid tiers of support.

  2. Re:well duh by jbeale53 · · Score: 5, Informative

    FYI, Sharepoint 2007 SP2 now supports Firefox with no config changes.