Beginning next week, Microsoft plans to charge those downloading its Office 2007 beta software.
It’s the first time the company has charged for beta downloads. The fee is $1.50 starting August 2.
I have three comments about this:
- If you have the time to work with this beta, don’t let $1.50 stand in your way. I’ve really enjoyed playing with it over the past few weeks. It can be frustrating trying to find that one command I need on the Ribbon, but the benefits outweigh the costs, so far.
- If Microsoft was really concerned about their servers, they wouldn’t have released O07 and Vista Beta 2s on the same day. That leads me to believe this is either some brilliant marketing ploy or some pathetic accounting ploy. Either way, their excuse of defraying costs doesn’t seem legitimate to me.
- I think this is the first time I’ve ever used a dollar sign instead of an ‘S’ when abbreviating Microsoft. I hate it when people do that because it shows a bias. I have no such bias, it just seemed funny in light of this story. It was probably the gin typing.
(hat tip: Kathleen)
Hey Souldnt these guys be paying us for testing their beta…
I was just reading about how Microsoft is having trouble generating growth in all of their product lines. This might just be their way out of the doldrums of the market.
I’ve been testing Excel 2007 with code that runs in Excel 97-2003, and have so far found 30 bugs or issues (9 of which have been in Excel since 97!). Problem is, there seems to be no way to report these to MS – can anyone on this blog do it?
With thanks,
Andrew Burnett