M$ to charge for Office 2007 betas....

[Dr Mordrid]

Believe it or not M$ can't afford the bandwidth of the 500m D/L's so they're passing it on to the Office 2007 betatesters in the form of a $1.50 charge

http://blogs.pcworld.com/techlog/archives/002499.html

[Paddy]

The direct download still works for me

*edit* link tied into session id

[Sasq]

Oh did I mention, the office has decided to deploy OO2

[Dr Mordrid]

[Gurm]

Oh did I mention, the office has decided to deploy OO2

Because in addition to having a LANGUAGE barrier with the entirety of the English speakin world, they also want to not be able to exchange documents? Rock!

[Jessterw]

Hrm. Not sure where you think you were going with that comment. The language barrier matters none as we are a software development firm that creates real-estate/lease management software for - get this - a solely Japanese market. The only part of the English speaking world that we have any regular contact with is, well, two people (I'm sure you can guess who those are).

In terms of document exchange, well, you see there's this handy feature called "Save As" which allows us to not only save to a DOC format, we can also save to a plethora of other formats including PDF. So what was that you were saying?

Believe it or not M$ can't afford the bandwidth of the 500m D/L's so they're passing it on to the Office 2007 betatesters in the form of a $1.50 charge

So now users are paying what Office is really worth. Or at least what all the new 'features' are

Truthfully, I can understand their reasoning behind this move and I really can't fault them, but it still seems like a slap in the face to the beta testers. Isn't their feedback worth the cost of bandwidth? As a developer, I'd say they should be.

[Wombat]

One might also think it's to get people used to the idea of paying subscription-style for the software. It's a time-limited beta, after all.

[Jessterw]

MS betas have almost always been time-limited, so that's nothing new. They have also charged for access to betas before as well, though in all but a few cases that has been strictly limited to shipping costs for physical media.

It could be a short-sighted way to get users used to a subscription model, but I doubt it. Charging for access to a beta version of software just doesn't make for a very good testing scenario.

[Gurm]

Hrm. Not sure where you think you were going with that comment. The language barrier matters none as we are a software development firm that creates real-estate/lease management software for - get this - a solely Japanese market. The only part of the English speaking world that we have any regular contact with is, well, two people (I'm sure you can guess who those are).

The first part of the statement was pure sarcasm. The second part was my usual jab at OO. 99% of the world uses .DOC/.XLS/etc., because they use Office. Until OO can read/write MS Office files flawlessly (which it still, correct me if I'm wrong, CANNOT DO), it is of less than optimal value, despite its free nature.

I'm not saying I APPROVE of the Microsoft monopoly. Some here have in the past accused me of being prejudiced in that manner. I'm just a realist and acknowledge that 90% of our customers run Windows/Office, another 9% run Mac with MS Office (Entourage is the bane of my existence), leaving about 1% that run something else.

OO is lovely, and within the company I'm sure it's grand. And if whoever you do business with is OK with getting .PDF's from you instead of .DOC or .XLS? Great.

I yearn for the day when there's at least two players again with reasonable market share, really I do. But until then I always have to shake my head a bit when some organization decides to buck the trend and go with the incompatible underdog.

And frankly, if I were in charge over at OO.O? I'd make it several people's full-time job to reverse-engineer the MS Office formats, so that it would never be a sticking point again!

[Nowhere]

So...how is the second player supposed to appear if no organisations "decide to go...with the uncompatible underdog"?

[Gurm]

So...how is the second player supposed to appear if no organisations "decide to go...with the uncompatible underdog"?

By... being compatible.

Back when Word and Wordperfect were locked in a two-way tie, MS actually came from behind with underhanded business practices. In those days (Office 4.3) I actually used Wordperfect exclusively. It had perfect compatibility with Word's .DOC format, despite MS's sneakiness.

If I knew that OO.O had 100% compatibility, and had more of the features I wanted, and less of the bloat? I'd use it, no question.

[Nowhere]

Perhaps that's why I do use it...it proved compatible in my case. (actually...sometimes more than MS Office; it's funny when people bring from Uni/get on mail docs created in latest version of Office and can't open them at theirs computer with older ones)

[Jessterw]

Well for starters, the OO development team does have people who's job is almost exclusively the reverse-engineering of file formats. I'd say they've done a damn fine job given the complete non-existence of any real documentation.

I'm not sure why we'd only have to send people (we do business with) just PDFs. It'd be just as easy to send them DOC/XLS/PPT files as well if they so desire. That I know of we've yet to have an issue opening or saving to MS Office file formats.

Nevermind that this is less about OO vs. MS Office than it is about open file formats that are adequately documented and allow for fair competition between those who utilize them. I spent five years piecing together documentation on MS Office file formats so that I (my previous employer) could provide document services to our software customers and our employees that went beyond the basics.

I much prefer not having to do that in the future. Thanks.

Less of the bloat? Wait, it's supposed to match MS Office in compatibility and features and yet it's not allowed to be as bloated? Suuure.

[Gurm]

Well for starters, the OO development team does have people who's job is almost exclusively the reverse-engineering of file formats. I'd say they've done a damn fine job given the complete non-existence of any real documentation.

I'm not sure why we'd only have to send people (we do business with) just PDFs. It'd be just as easy to send them DOC/XLS/PPT files as well if they so desire. That I know of we've yet to have an issue opening or saving to MS Office file formats.

I might have to try it then, and no I'm not being facetious. Last time I fiddled with any of the OO programs, its compatibility was somewhere between zero and "y'know, the Mac version of office!"... if that has changed, I'm genuinely excited!

Nevermind that this is less about OO vs. MS Office than it is about open file formats that are adequately documented and allow for fair competition between those who utilize them. I spent five years piecing together documentation on MS Office file formats so that I (my previous employer) could provide document services to our software customers and our employees that went beyond the basics.

True that. I spent a couple years working for a document company trying to reverse-engineer .PS and .PCL, and Adobe and HP were LESS than helpful, let me tell you.

Less of the bloat? Wait, it's supposed to match MS Office in compatibility and features and yet it's not allowed to be as bloated? Suuure.

Yes, it's supposed to offer something to entice me, other than the queasy feeling I get from using open-source software.

[Nowhere]

BTW mimickry...why they felt so compelled to copy that awfull "shaded look" of MS Office taskbar... :/