Open Sources | Rodrigues & Urlocker » Microsoft to charge for Office beta

July 30, 2006 | Comments: (0)

Microsoft to charge for Office beta

TAGS: Microsoft

Microsoft will begin charging $1.50 per download of Office 2007 Beta. This cost to consumers reflects Microsoft's concern that the 3 million downloads thus far cost too much money to support in terms of bandwidth.

Let's see if this makes sense:
-Office is Microsoft's cash cow
-3 million people downloaded the beta of Office 2007 because they are interested in using it
-Microsoft can't afford the bandwidth charges associated with demo'ing the new version of Office so they pass the cost onto customers.

I'm not saying that $1.50/download charge is unreasonable for beta Office software--no, wait, I am. When one of the worlds' richest companies starts charging for consumer bandwidth their sales and cost models are seriously broken.

It is nothing short of absurd that any company would charge users for a beta version of the product they want those users to upgrade to. They should be embarrassed.

Posted by Dave Rosenberg on July 30, 2006 02:27 PM

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