Microsoft to charge for Office beta

[ObiWan]

Microsoft plans next week to charge a nominal fee for Office 2007 Beta 2 downloads, a move that runs counter to the practice held by most software companies.

Consumers who download the 2007 Microsoft Office system Beta 2 will be charged $1.50 per download, beginning next Wednesday at 6 p.m. PDT, a Microsoft representative said.

"Since the end of May, Beta 2 has been downloaded more than 3 million times...That's 500 percent more than what was expected," the representative said. "The fee helps offset the cost of downloading from the servers."

Source: http://news.zdnet.com/2100-3513_22-6...ml?tag=nl.e550

[Virtualbody1234]

"The fee helps offset the cost of downloading from the servers."

P2P to the rescue!

[tesco]

"The fee helps offset the cost of downloading from the servers."

P2P to the rescue!

That's where I got it. Faster and more reliable than microsoft servers.

[j0hn]

"Since the end of May, Beta 2 has been downloaded more than 3 million times...That's 500 percent more than what was expected," the representative said.

P2P to the rescue!

That's where I got it. Faster and more reliable than microsoft servers.

im guessing theres been alot more than 3 million downloads then!

thats where companies should follow the linux iso's, and offer something like bittorrent to download files. i'd at least share it back once in full.
that would half their bandwidth.

in my opinion charging for a beta is wrong, its not even complete yet and will most likely still contain bugs. the users of the beta are in effect testing the app for microsoft, on a very large scale. how much would testing that intensively cost if they didnt offer a free beta? alot more than the bandwidth bill i reckon.

[FreeDoom]

...will be charged $1.50 per download...

Well 3000000X1.50 = 4.5 million.
They just can't afford to loose all that cash now do they?
Is the server bills so high?

[Dedalus^]

Well, most people download the suite, and thats about 2-3gigs*3 million.

Thats a lot of traffic.

I think BT should be the way to distribute these betas, i agree with John.