Now How Much Would You Pay?
David Coursey’s latest AnchorDesk column at ZDNet ponders the possibility of per-year pricing for Office, as Microsoft is presently planning. Would you pay a yearly subscription to Microsoft Office? I don’t see it as a huge change, since I end up paying for Office again every year or two in the form of upgrades. Then again, this seems like a return to the days of mainframe and minicomputers. Back when I worked with a WANG system, most of the software was sold as a yearly license. The PC revolution created the out-of-the-box software phenomenon, and now Microsoft wants to put it back in the box. Here’s my biggest issue. If this ends up being the only model they offer, you’ll have to pay once a year, and this means Microsoft will probably only offer support if you’re running the latest version. Considering that it took me two years to be dragged kicking and screaming into upgrading to Office 97, and the same with Office 2000, I’m not sure I want to be forced to upgrade. Microsoft usually comes up with some killer “features” that make each new version more bloated, buggy, and confusing to use. Coursey tentatively estimated a cost of $116 a year. So, to paraphrase a MasterCard commercial…
- Current version of Microsoft Office: $450
- Use of Microsoft Office for one year: $116
- A competing product that actually works: PRICELESS