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I quit My Job for Folding
Is your family a Microsoft sucker?
Microsoft Should Offer Families A Deal With Its Office Program
By WALTER S. MOSSBERG
There's a sucker in the software business today, and if you're in an average family with a couple of PCs, that sucker is you. Ever since last fall, Microsoft has, for the first time, forced families with multiple PCs to buy a separate copy of its Office productivity suite for each computer they'd like to upgrade to the latest version.
This one-copy-per-PC policy has always been buried in the fine print in the lengthy, legalistic user agreement you have to click past when you install Microsoft software. But it was never enforced, or even explained.
Yet suddenly, the company instituted a new requirement called "activation," which blocks the installation of the same copy of Office on a second desktop PC. That has meant a big price increase for families that want to keep their two or three PCs up to date.
But that's not why families are suckers in Microsoft's world. The real reason is this: Families constitute the only significant customer group not getting a discount on Office when upgrading multiple PCs. Big corporations, organizations and government agencies get a discount, called a "site license." College students get a discount. Small and medium-size businesses get a discount. But not families.
Technically, a family might be able to get a small discount on Office by buying a site license, but when I went to Microsoft's Web site to look into this option, the whole process was discussed only in terms of businesses, not consumers.
And you can install a copy of Office on a second PC if it's a laptop. But the legalese says that the laptop may only be used by the same person who uses the first installation of Office, so that doesn't help families.
What makes this situation even worse is that, at the retail prices families must pay, Office represents a big percentage of the price of a new PC. At CompUSA, the standard edition of Office XP costs $479.99, and the upgrade version, for folks who have an earlier version, is $229.99. To put that in perspective, CompUSA sells an entire Windows XP computer, the eMachines T1220, for $474.99 -- less than the full price of a single copy of Office. Even if we use for comparison a more typical Compaq or Hewlett-Packard model costing $800, Office is still a huge percentage of the cost of the PC -- about 60% if you pay full price.
And unlike PCs sold to businesses, consumer PCs sold at retail rarely come with Office preinstalled. Yet Office has become the world standard for creating documents, even in the home and at school. The PTA newsletter is usually written in Word. High school reports are often accompanied by PowerPoint slides, another Office component.
Of course, Microsoft absolutely has the right to protect its intellectual property and to set any terms it wishes for the use of software, including the one-copy-per-PC rule. But as familiar as that rule is, it's not engraved in the Ten Commandments or the Constitution. It's just a business policy, and policies can be changed.
So why doesn't Microsoft establish a Family Pack, or family license for Office? This would be a boxed version sold at retail, for a somewhat higher price, that could legally be installed on, say, up to three computers in a family.
I have asked various Microsoft officials, from Chief Executive Steve Ballmer on down, why the company doesn't offer such a Family Pack. All have said the idea has been considered and continues to be considered. But some explain that Office pricing is complex, and that it would be tough for Microsoft to offer families a better price than a huge corporate customer. Not only that, they say, but there's a danger that big companies might just buy up lots of cheap Family Packs.
I doubt the latter fear is real, because big companies tend to upgrade Office on many PCs at a time, over a network. But one way to guard against that, and to lower the price for families even further, would be to create a special family version of Office, for both single sales and the possible Family Packs.
Such a family version could have all the key Office features, except those used mainly by business customers, such as the macro programming language, support for corporate e-mail and links to corporate databases. Few big companies would want this version, but families would love it, especially if it cost a lot less than Office does today.
I have no idea if Microsoft will ever do a Family Pack, or a family version, of Office. But I wish the company would, so families will no longer be suckers.
Fonte: http://ptech.wsj.com/archive/ptech-20020718.html
Microsoft Should Offer Families A Deal With Its Office Program
By WALTER S. MOSSBERG
There's a sucker in the software business today, and if you're in an average family with a couple of PCs, that sucker is you. Ever since last fall, Microsoft has, for the first time, forced families with multiple PCs to buy a separate copy of its Office productivity suite for each computer they'd like to upgrade to the latest version.
This one-copy-per-PC policy has always been buried in the fine print in the lengthy, legalistic user agreement you have to click past when you install Microsoft software. But it was never enforced, or even explained.
Yet suddenly, the company instituted a new requirement called "activation," which blocks the installation of the same copy of Office on a second desktop PC. That has meant a big price increase for families that want to keep their two or three PCs up to date.
But that's not why families are suckers in Microsoft's world. The real reason is this: Families constitute the only significant customer group not getting a discount on Office when upgrading multiple PCs. Big corporations, organizations and government agencies get a discount, called a "site license." College students get a discount. Small and medium-size businesses get a discount. But not families.
Technically, a family might be able to get a small discount on Office by buying a site license, but when I went to Microsoft's Web site to look into this option, the whole process was discussed only in terms of businesses, not consumers.
And you can install a copy of Office on a second PC if it's a laptop. But the legalese says that the laptop may only be used by the same person who uses the first installation of Office, so that doesn't help families.
What makes this situation even worse is that, at the retail prices families must pay, Office represents a big percentage of the price of a new PC. At CompUSA, the standard edition of Office XP costs $479.99, and the upgrade version, for folks who have an earlier version, is $229.99. To put that in perspective, CompUSA sells an entire Windows XP computer, the eMachines T1220, for $474.99 -- less than the full price of a single copy of Office. Even if we use for comparison a more typical Compaq or Hewlett-Packard model costing $800, Office is still a huge percentage of the cost of the PC -- about 60% if you pay full price.
And unlike PCs sold to businesses, consumer PCs sold at retail rarely come with Office preinstalled. Yet Office has become the world standard for creating documents, even in the home and at school. The PTA newsletter is usually written in Word. High school reports are often accompanied by PowerPoint slides, another Office component.
Of course, Microsoft absolutely has the right to protect its intellectual property and to set any terms it wishes for the use of software, including the one-copy-per-PC rule. But as familiar as that rule is, it's not engraved in the Ten Commandments or the Constitution. It's just a business policy, and policies can be changed.
So why doesn't Microsoft establish a Family Pack, or family license for Office? This would be a boxed version sold at retail, for a somewhat higher price, that could legally be installed on, say, up to three computers in a family.
I have asked various Microsoft officials, from Chief Executive Steve Ballmer on down, why the company doesn't offer such a Family Pack. All have said the idea has been considered and continues to be considered. But some explain that Office pricing is complex, and that it would be tough for Microsoft to offer families a better price than a huge corporate customer. Not only that, they say, but there's a danger that big companies might just buy up lots of cheap Family Packs.
I doubt the latter fear is real, because big companies tend to upgrade Office on many PCs at a time, over a network. But one way to guard against that, and to lower the price for families even further, would be to create a special family version of Office, for both single sales and the possible Family Packs.
Such a family version could have all the key Office features, except those used mainly by business customers, such as the macro programming language, support for corporate e-mail and links to corporate databases. Few big companies would want this version, but families would love it, especially if it cost a lot less than Office does today.
I have no idea if Microsoft will ever do a Family Pack, or a family version, of Office. But I wish the company would, so families will no longer be suckers.
Fonte: http://ptech.wsj.com/archive/ptech-20020718.html
