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Can Microsoft Really Convince People To Subscribe To Software?
curtwoodward writes "For most consumers, monthly subscriptions are still something for magazines and cable TV. With Office 365, Microsoft is about to embark on a huge social experiment to see if they'll also pay that way for basic software. But in doing so, Microsoft has jacked up prices on its old fee structure to make subscriptions seem like a better deal. And that could really leave a bad impression with financially struggling consumers."
Only dirty open source hippies expect things to be free. The rest of us are perfectly willing to pay for things. But it's hard to believe that people, and especially businesses, will actually fall for this scam.
For example, I still have Office 2003. I bought it, I paid for it, and unless someone from Microsoft shows up at my house and points a gun at my head, I can continue to use it forever.
Dream on. Somewhere around 2000-2003 Microsoft software products started getting real cozy with the Mothership via Internet. Meaning that there's a fairly decent chance that Microsoft could simply switch it off on you. Although more likely, based on their past history, you'll simply discover one day that the latest version of Windows won't run Office 2003 properly any more. And whether or not they decide to do an "Amazon" and "1984" old copies of Office or not, it's a virtual certainty that they'll do that for your old versions of Windows itself, if for no other reason than to seal off old exploit vectors. The world has enough ancient infected Microsoft systems afflicting it as it is.
In the mean time, us dirty open-source hippies will be running office software that not only isn't constantly chatting back to home base, but we'll be able to keep it up to date, since new open-source releases will continue to be free.