Can Microsoft Really Convince People To Subscribe To Software? 297
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."
Why has the slashdot MS symbol changed? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Adobe tried already (Score:2, Interesting)
Exactly what I'm doing now. I have a youtube channel where I do tutorials; I get all my video capture with CamStudio and the majority of my graphics together in gimp then every 4 months I subscribe to the adobe cloud service and in that month I finalize the graphics and then stitch everything together.
It's worked out pretty well for me so far this year and I'm saving a bunch of money. I save all the assets I reuse in their cloud so I don't have to worry about backing up/sorting everything on my computer.
As long as MS offers the complete office suite (visio & project too) and the costing is similar to what adobe is charging I'd see no reason not to subscribe. If this is the case you're going to pay about the same amount for the software anyways, but you can turn off/on subscriptions on the fly and you'll get offsite hosting of your documents - which is both a good and bad thing depending on your situation. Of course I'm assuming in this case we're talking about corporate licensing - for my home use LibreOffice is more then good enough.
Removes their development incentive (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Re:LibreOffice (Score:4, Interesting)
Yeah, but how often do you need to share files in a mixed environment like that. I think a business that is currently MS Office will either stay with Office, or they will put one of the OO.org forks on every machine and internal sharing will just switch to ODF instead of OOXML and the old documents/templates will be converted/recreated and deprecated over time.
You only need to be able to share documents while you're collaboratively working on them. Once finished, they should be baked into PDF or paper anyway.
Re:Adobe tried already (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:why subscribe again? (Score:5, Interesting)
Interesting idea - that the document applications are basically mature, and not much more is needed/desired on the part of users.
In a world like that, you would expect development of new office suits to slow, and the department sizes to shrink. Ongoing development for the trickle of new features and bugs that need to be corrected, but on a much smaller scale than originally. Same as with operating systems.
I think maybe it is unreasonable to assume that a company in an expanding market would forever grow or even never contract. Surely as computers become ubiquitous, the purchases will only be for replacements, which one would expect would be lower than the peak where new units and replacements were being purchased.
Software Subscriptions and Circuit City Divx (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Great, more timebombs (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:LibreOffice (Score:5, Interesting)
It's not just migrating the office suite, it's everything. At school every major piece of software I use (Matlab, MathCAD, & Solidworks) integrates with Excel. This means that to migrate away from MS Office I have to have all three of these programs work with the replacement. Good luck getting people to migrate until you have that compatibility. This does seem to be something that I don't see brought up all that often, and yes it is important.
Re:Hope this works. Ad supported is not what I wan (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
Re:Hope this works. Ad supported is not what I wan (Score:4, Interesting)
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).
Comment removed (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Hope this works. Ad supported is not what I wan (Score:4, Interesting)
...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.
Re:Hope this works. Ad supported is not what I wan (Score:2, Interesting)
One of the reasons why those idiots over at the open source end wanted an "open" format was because there are some professions (law, architecture, science, etc.) that need documents to be 'readable' after more than one or two software release cycles. Example: "Sir, you claim you have a deed for this property? Yes, I paid it off 15 years ago, there is an electronic record of it along with this paper. I see the paper, but we have no electronic record we can read." ...and God help the homeowner who had the paper copy in a safety deposit box at the bank that was robbed. No records, no house, or at least no proof. Now think about electronically scanning ancient documents (eg: an ancient codex) to allow wide study by scholars worldwide. What is the point if the format is unreadable in 3-5 years? The ODF format (those silly open source people) was designed by a large group including Adobe, IBM, Xerox, Boeing, and the Vatican Library among others to be widely useable and static so that new versions of software all hit the same target and a document created 5-5000 years ago is still readable (or at least the format is documented and can be made readable). Microsoft formats are all undocumented (likewise their OOXML), and they go out of their way to make their products incompatible with any of their products older than 2 release versions. And people still pay for and use their stuff. WTF?
Re:Hope this works. Ad supported is not what I wan (Score:5, Interesting)
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.