Slashdot Mirror
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."
The icon was the Borg Gates, now it is just a word.
If you liked Microsoft Tax you're going to love Microsoft Rent.
I am a free slashdotter. I will not be modded, blogged, DRM'd, patented, podcasted or RFID'd. My life is my own.
At least for my needs, LibreOffice takes care of everything I have to do. Perhaps if more people were educated about alternatives it would knock some steam out of Microsoft. I understand that enterprise would be a hard sell, but on the consumer level it is doable.
Going back to the time-sharing days is not something most of us would like. The PC revolution was all about empowering the user, the subscription/cloud model is all about giving control back to big companies.
I hope it won't happen, but after seeing the queues to buy a overrated, expensive toy this Friday and assuming there are that many ready to part with their money in exchange for a locked system, I really don't expect it to fail. There are many that will trade freedom for (assumed) convenience too easily.
So, my Office suite was purchased back in the latter half of 2000 (maybe first half of 2001, don't exactly remember). It still works fine, and I haven't spent a dime on it since then.
Back in the bad old days, when we were forever reaching for that next release of the OS or that next release of Word in the hopes that it would crash less often and we could actually get some work done, Microsoft built a business model based on expensive incremental releases (a similar game to what Apple is playing now with hardware) and we all went along with it because we needed something that worked.
To a certain extent, Microsoft is now a prisoner of their own success. For the great majority of users, Office stopped progressing over a decade ago, and Windows stopped progressing in 2002 (xp sp1). There is no longer any need to go out and buy every new version. Hasn't been for awhile.
The problem is, Microsoft relies on that new release income to function, and I'm sure they're worried. Now comes a new paradigm -- software rental -- that guarantees it. I'm sure that seemed like a great idea, and I'm sure the person who came up with the idea of jacking up the prices of their non-subscription products got a big ol' raise.
The thing is, there are fewer and fewer reasons to stick with Microsoft products, and more and more ways to migrate off them while maintaining backwards compatibility. If you stick with the mindset that "we are microsoft, and people will buy from us for that reason only", the strategy makes sense. But I wonder if the premise is true anymore. Personally, if and when I can't use my old crufty copy of Office anymore, I will actively seek one of the free solutions before allowing myself to be locked into a Microsoft solution. It's just self-preservation.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
You can use it until they 'upgrade' the format. At some point few enough people will be using the older formats that they become effectively unusable.
And considering how terms and conditions change on the fly, to lock myself into a subscription that can be turned off at anytime because I refused to go along with the new terms is just asinine.
As it is, my Office XP license is perfect for me, but already MS is playing games with that. I have a license that I bought in '02 and it worked fine for YEARS, then one day, MS sneaked in the Genuine something or another (that's what I get for being zealous about keeping my system up to date and continuously checking that my selection or unselection for the Genuine whatever STAYED uncbecked) and it still said it was OK. then one day for some reason, the Genuine fucker decided that NOW my license is illegitimate? WTF, MS?! - I get the pop-up and whatnot but I ignore it - fuck'em.
My point? I don't trust them - or ANY software vendor with a subscription. I think some of those people are working there because they were fired for ethics issues with the cable companies.
If such a scheme is introduced, it will cause/fuel a renewed proliferation of Crack and Hacks that will really cost M$ serious money in the long run.
Since older versions still abound, and I am quite confident that there are more than a few of us that will simply hold on to those versions until it is simply impossible to do so any more. By then, there will be a Free alternative, and M$ may have learned its lesson.
Only dirty open source hippies expect things to be free.
Consumers expect free. Not because of open source, because of the internet. Facebook is free, news is free, Google docs are free, everything is free.
Of course, businesses are willing to pay if it gives them a competitive advantage or improves the bottom line, and Microsoft makes most of their money from b2b sales. So the question is whether Microsoft can get them on a subscription basis.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
If they are already getting monthly/yearly fees from customers, what's the incentive to produce good products? Now we get to vote by not buying that version and continuing to use an old one. With this new model they'll get money either way.
Their hard core users will probably pay, but many people are occasional users. Free and/or cheaper products will make out big on this. Word processing and spreadsheets aren't exactly cutting edge applications anymore.
It's a OK word processor, a mediocre but adequate spreadsheet
With a shining endorsement like that, who wouldn't want to use it?
Indeed. We are running up against this with Excel 2003. While with the compatibility pack it can open Excel 2007 and 2010 files, the newer features do not work rendering 2003 little better than a glorified viewer for some of the spreadsheets being sent to some of our staff.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
But it's hard to believe that people, and especially businesses, will actually fall for this scam.
Actually the subscription thing is primarily driven by businesses, not consumers.
If you need to install 5000 computers you could be looking at 5 million dollars in cash outlays just for software licences. And as other people point out, when you need to upgrade you need to upgrade a lot of your IT, that can be 5 million dollars all at once. With a subscription cost it makes your expenses less bursty.
The other thing with businesses is that a subscription plan defers some of your IT responsibility away from in house, that's actually good for small shops. Trying to navigate the various upgrade paths, support options, and trying to stay compliant with volume licencing arrangements costs money.
It also means, when you layoff staff, that you aren't stuck holding investments in software that you don't need anymore.
You're right, most consumers don't care, but that's where you want to find a value added service to tack on that you're charging for. Cloud storage and synchronization sort of stuff usually.
As a soho business that deals with PII (personally identifiable information) I'm unable to advantage of any kind of cloud based office suite. The risk should any of that information be released accidently by Cloud Office is financial ruin due to fines, possible prison and being made an example by the Feds for violating while MS gets off with no risk. Sorry Charlie but it aint going to happen.
If the price of Windows and Office climbs to high, I'll have no choice but to move the entire business over to Open Source solutions just to stay in business. As far as document exchange go, I'm already using PDF as my base format. If the customer can't read it, then I wont do anymore business with them as everyone has a PDF reader available (Adobe Reader on Windows and native support on Apple). Solves the problem and I don't have to worry about them being able to edit/change anything w/o my being able to prove it. CYA man, CYA.
Mod me up/Mod me down: I wont frown as I've no crown
Back in 1998 one of my colleagues expressed a favorable attitude towards the pay per view technology being marketed by Circuit City as Divx. I gasped and suggested an analogy of having to pay Microsoft a dime every time you used MS word or even worse, every time you saved a document. While not the same as subscriptions the concept is similar.
Office is deeply entrenched in the business world so this move could be a financial bonanza for Microsoft until the business world rebelled. Lotus Notes (Which IMNSHO sucks big green donkey dicks.) could replace Outlook and the Lotus suite of apps based on Open Office could replace the balance of Office. Courageous management would dump commercial software and go with Open Office or Libre Office.
Big challenges are user training and finding a replacement with the same kind of email and calendar integration that Outlook offers. I work for a large tech company. Being able to schedule meetings and conference calls, and getting reminders of same makes the work day flow smoothly. At least until your exchange server becomes unreachable.
We need a Darth Balmer icon for Slashdot.
Probably less than 5% know they use open source.
On the contrary, I'd argue it's nearly impossible to use the Internet without interacting with open source software.
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law
I have a personal technet subscription, which is effectively renting MS products (annual fee, access to latest software, and other goodies)
Work has enterprise licencing, which is not much different.
so... some of us have been renting MS software for years.
If you do signup for an MS Office subscription, make sure you uninstall the software before the subscription expires. Some of the most badly-borked systems I have encountered in the past three years have had a pre-release version of Office installed that went beyond its timebomb date. I expect similar badness to occur with systems where an Office subscription has expired.
You might be surprised. Many people do more with their home computers than just Farmville and porn.
People volunteer for non-profit organizations, join the board of the PTA or their homeowners' assocation, start a small business, help with their kid's little league, work on a master's degree, and more.
Google Apps, Libre Office, and the other suites out there... like you said, are mediocre. Yes, you can write a letter and track your DVD collection. And it's also true that a ton of people barely use 5% of what Word, Excel, and the rest of Office can do.
But then you have this whole subset of "home users" who are professionals using Office at the home for more than just their shopping lists. They need the features (and ease of use, and support, and templates, and clip art, and and and) that Office offers. The features that they use when they're at work -- creating complex budgets, slideshows, long documents -- all get used at the home as well.
And so I don't buy the argument that Office doesn't have anything that a home user needs. Because for a lot of people, home users are doing a lot more than you're giving them credit for.
Actually the subscription thing is primarily driven by businesses, not consumers.
You're mostly right ... so far. But if you read the current stories about Microsoft's Office 365 pitch, they are very clearly pitching consumers. There have only been two subscription plans announced for Office 2013 so far: Home & Student and Home & Business. The Business one is designed for companies with 10 employees or less. The Home & Student one includes a license to install the software on five computers, and all can be used by different people as long as they belong to the same household.
Microsoft is expected to announce enterprise subscription plans for Office 2013, but they have said nothing about it so far. It's all pretty much been home users and very small businesses.
Breakfast served all day!
This is why businesses should push very hard to use nothing but open formats. Tying yourself to a single vendor for hardware or software is just asking for trouble. A company can abuse their customers much more if it's difficult to switch products.
I would love nothing more, but my company is primarily a government contractor, and until the departments we deal with start using open formats, we are stuck. As it is, we are pretty much looking at buying licenses for the remaining Office 2003 installs by the end of this year. So far our Office 2007 workstations still seem capable of dealing with anything Office 2010 throws at us.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
You know a decade ago it seemed IE 6 was going to be the future forever as people hated change and websites optimized just for that one browser. Things did change though and finally forced MS to make an IE that doesn't suck and starts behaving like everyone.
Perhaps that can change with Office but right now Open/LibreOffice is not as good and there is no reason to change. Firefox was much quicker in version 1.5 Firebird than IE 6 and had new things like tabs. It still took nearly 4 to 5 years before people who are not geeks gradually switched in force to today where most people left IE.
The same is true with Office. We need something faster and has more functionality than Office before enough people will change. Corporate users are always last to change as some still use IE 6 today and plan to use it for decades more in Citrix virtual machines. Corps will change 5 to7 years after everyone else. Only then will standards win with a file format. The government can do all it wants but no one will take the risk of looking incompetent or losing customers with a messed up doc being emailed.
So geeks, think of things to add or write your own suite that is leaps and bounds better and offiers things no one else has and can run very fast. Then the problem will solve itself in time.
http://saveie6.com/
Businesses have been on a subscription model for many years. Client access licenses and otehr things have time limits built in or you can pay annually and you get free upgrades too. Like what what they do for WIndows 7 Enteprise licenses that they use to downgrade back down to XP.
It is practically free (as in paid for already) but they keep old around. Smaller businesses have leases and use clouds as well. To them they need monthly costs in line for lines of credit and to make good reports for partners and shareholders.
I admit consumers do not have such demands and probably wont put up with it. I will hold on to Office 2k10 for a long time if MS tries to pull this. Since I am transforming into one of those neophytes who hate change I will be keeping Windows 7 until 2019 as well so I know office will run on that for many many years.
Unfortunately, most people in the real world use an office product to share files and communicate with other people and entities. THerefore, what corps want we buy too do work at home and send resumes, etc. I have a feeling Office 2k13 will bomb as most corpos are going with office 2k10 from 2k3 as they migrate to Windows 7 this year and the next.
http://saveie6.com/
Consumers expect free - due to open source movement
What? Consumers generally think that anything that does not cost enormous amounts of money is not useful.
That means we are headed to ad supported model which is BAD.
We are not heading for an ad supported model; we already did that once, and it was a disaster. Remember the days when programs like BearShare would install malicious adware on your computer?
We are actually heading for something much worse than ad supported software: software as a service. You know, that thing where you have no control over your data, no control over your software, where you can be arbitrarily denied access to important documents for any reason or no reason, and where fees can be forced on you without warning. Ads will certainly appear in such software -- and probably will appear in addition to subscription fees (which is what you see on cable television).
Palm trees and 8
> Only dirty open source hippies expect things to be free. The rest of us are perfectly willing to pay for things
Don't kid yourself. Windows users steal anything that isn't nailed down and then pass it around like party favors.
Microsoft's market share was built on this.
A Linux "freeloader" is far more likely to acknowledge that there is a license.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
...which covers about 95% of the users.
Not everyone should need to waste money on a Word Perfect wannabe just because some corporation managed to convince everyone that their file format is some kind of defacto standard.
It's about on par with everyone being expected to install a copy of the Oracle database.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
It's a WORD PROCESSOR. It's something that should have been a well understood problem 20 years ago. Never mind 9.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
We need something faster and has more functionality than Office
"More functionality"? Office is a bloated pile of crap because of the excessive and redundant features. What used to be a pretty useful wordprocessor back about 1992, Word 5, is now so feature laden that hardly anyone uses or even knows a tenth of its features.
I edit books and authors send me files in Word. I have yet to see one -- whether a businessman, doctor, or university professor -- that knows what a Word "style" is. They one and all treat it like a typewriter. Few of them seem to be able to spellcheck.
The only reason anyone upgrades is because they have no choice when they buy, or they have to be able to read the file format. My daughter demanded I get it for that reason, as her teachers distribute files in various MS Office formats. I installed Ubuntu on her laptop and she now uses Libre Office. It works, it's free.
Dude, you are seriously confused.
I mean we hear constant screams about MSFT having too much cruft and backwards compatibility holding things back...
The screams about backwards compatibility holding things back must be in your head? I don't hear them.
I doubt very seriously you'd get anything but word salad if you tried to open the latest LO ODF files on OO.o 1.0
Your point is asinine. Why would anyone run an antique version of a free software suite when the newest version is only a download (or a free mailed CD) away?
Software gets new and nifty features, no-one says that this is a bad thing. Proprietary software houses, however, essentially run an upgrade racket driven by incompatible new formats. Some are worse than MS, Adobe, for instance, offers no way to save in older formats and sneakily "upgrades" older files when opened in a newer version. CS4 even did this without the user having saved the document. My brother, who uses a Macbook, constantly mailed me docx-files with schedules for conversion when in university as his professor refused to save in an older format, and the tables used didn't show up in free suites. When confronted about this, the professor wasn't even aware that this could be an issue, and he told my brother that he "didn't have time" for pandering to students on off-brand devices. Nobody wins but Microsoft in such a situation.
For OSS this is never an issue as upgrades are free. The problem is that proprietary software upgrades will always incur significant costs. If you can't even admit that this is a serious advantage of open source, and one that can even be decisive for certain users, you are deluded. It dawns on me that you are likely a strong fanboy or even a paid shill, in which case you will admit to no arguments against your loyalties, and my post is wasted.
The fact that they even gave you a compatibility pack at all was more than the other guys, so maybe if you need it that bad you might want to just pick up a copy of something from this decade, yes?
"More than the other guys?" How on Earth can you say that with a straight face? The "other guys" give you their whole fucking product for free... Yup, astroturfing confirmed.
Are you a grammar Nazi? I'm trying to improve my English; please correct my errors!