29 July 2006
MS Office Beta for $1.50
Starting next Wednesday, people who want to download the beta version of MS Office 2007 will have to pay $1.50 for each download. This is said to help with the cost of running the servers which host the downloads.
I have two comments on this. The first, I always though those who beta test are doing a service for the people they are testing for and without the beta testers there could be more undetected bugs in the code. The second comment is, a company the size of Microsoft is going to actually be hurt by the cost of hosting a beta version of their software. Other companies seem to have no problem providing beta versions of their software free of charge. It seems to be another MS game to make more money from it's loyal crowd.
I have two comments on this. The first, I always though those who beta test are doing a service for the people they are testing for and without the beta testers there could be more undetected bugs in the code. The second comment is, a company the size of Microsoft is going to actually be hurt by the cost of hosting a beta version of their software. Other companies seem to have no problem providing beta versions of their software free of charge. It seems to be another MS game to make more money from it's loyal crowd.
