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Office 2007 Downloads Top 3 Million

By Nate Mook, BetaNews

July 28, 2006, 4:02 PM

In the two months since its debut, Office 2007 Beta 2 has been downloaded by over three million people, Microsoft told BetaNews Friday. In fact, the demand has been so high that the company has decided to begin charging customers $1.50 USD for the download beginning August 2.

The beta bits, which weigh in at 550MB for the primary Office applications and 2GB for the full suite, have put a considerable strain on Microsoft's network. The company says demand has surpassed expectations by 500%, and it has decided to add the small fee as a "cost recovery measure" for future downloads.

A Microsoft spokesperson explained that the Redmond company does not plan to make charging for betas a regular practice, and Beta 2 users will not be charged for a Technical Refresh build that is expected to be released in the coming weeks. The Beta 2 Refresh is set to include a number of refinements to Office 2007, including more polished icons and themes along with bug fixes.

"It can kind of be equated to the shipping and handling charge that has been required for a physical DVD of the beta," the spokesperson said. "Another option would be to simply take the download offline and not make it available anymore, but we are still seeing significant interest in the beta and want to provide it as an option for those interested."

Microsoft will continue to offer its online test drive program free of charge. The Web-based demo showcases the new user interface and features found in Office 2007 without requiring a large download or installation of beta software.

"It really speaks well for the product and the excitement surrounding it that after 2 months and over 3M downloads, it’s still going strong," added the Microsoft spokesperson.

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By tagamesh

edited Jan 22, 2007 - 4:59 AM

fine

Score: 0

By dude3000

posted Aug 13, 2006 - 5:56 AM

we can't understand why Microsoft are getting rid of a standard GUI layout consisting of
the menu bar and proper toolbars and replacing it with the fugly train wreck of a GUI
layout in Office 2007. I further can't understand why some people actually like it!

Score: 0

By DJGM

posted Jul 31, 2006 - 12:45 PM

I can't understand why Microsoft are getting rid of a standard GUI layout consisting of
the menu bar and proper toolbars and replacing it with the fugly train wreck of a GUI
layout in Office 2007. I further can't understand why some people actually like it!
Are they mad? How can anyone like that mess is beyond realistic belief!

As soon as Office XP and 2003 are no longer supported by the boffins at Redmond,
then it'll be OpenOffice all the way. At least that maintains a standard GUI layout.

Score: 0

By PC_Tool

edited Jul 31, 2006 - 12:57 PM

Not mad, just not quite as fearful of change as you seem to be.

Actually, after ya know, *using* it for a while, it's a lot easier and a lot faster to get a job done *without* having to navigate those menubars and toolbars.

You just have to be open-minded enough to try it this way. (Sometimes change is a good thing).

I will understand if the above is not possible for you.

Score: 0

By ladylust

posted Jul 30, 2006 - 2:57 PM

GO GO MS! I love beating back the MS bashers :)

Score: 0

By aredo

posted Jul 30, 2006 - 5:40 AM

Microsoft is such a pathetic scam of a Company. They are a monopoly and since many people download a free beta what they decide to do ? Charge them all "a symbolic rate", yeah.. they have to earn money on unstable Beta builds as well.

Until some groups of politicians and judges won't stop "accepting gifts" from Mr.Gates and do what they have been elected for, this Microsoft scam will continue and keep getting worse and worse.

In the '80s Reagan split up the telco monopolies, it's now time someone does the same to Microsoft. And Linux is the Mr.Gates trojan-horse to avoid any competition. If Linux didn't exist we might have had some real competition against Microsoft in the last 15 years.

Score: 0

By wincement

edited Jul 30, 2006 - 3:37 PM

What's pathetic is your logic.

yeah.. they have to earn money on unstable Beta builds as well.

Absolutely idiotic. You think they're earning anything at $1.50 per download? You are insane. I doubt that even counters their bandwidth costs, let alone the man-hours the open beta program is costing them.

Think about it:

550MB x 3,000,000 downloads = ~1,611,328.125 GB of bandwidth.

Can you imagine the cost of that? Probably not. You don't have the sense God gave a twig.

And Linux is the Mr.Gates trojan-horse to avoid any competition. If Linux didn't exist we might have had some real competition against Microsoft in the last 15 years.

I rest my case...

Score: 0

By aredo

edited Jul 30, 2006 - 5:00 PM

Yeah, sure. So you think that bandwidth costs a lot of money to Microsoft, right?
Did you recently see how much is public bandwidth cost for shared server web space ? 1,000GB bandwidth a month costs as low as $8 to the general public. So, even 10,000,000GB would cost Microsoft a few bucks compared to the general public price.

Do you really think that Microsoft put a cost on Beta downloads for no reason other than making a profit out of it ?
If they weren't earning anything they wouldn't have done it, and that's for sure.

And, 3 Million downloads at $1.50 each =

$4,500,000 ... that's a lot of money which covers much more than the bandwidth alone, and that's for sure. Considering that you or me could buy 1,000GB monthly bandwidth for as low as $8 on the 'net already... and Microsoft gets far lower prices for both being Microsoft and for consuming thousand of Terabytes of bandwidth every single month...

Score: 0

By wincement

posted Jul 31, 2006 - 11:31 PM

Grow some brain cells.

Microsoft will start charging for beta downloads August 2nd. They aren't retroactively charging all downloaders $1.50 per download.

They get nothing for the 3 million downloads that they have had since the program started.

So tell me, how are they profiting off of this program? At $1.50 per future download? (apparently, it's necessary to specify with you)

Yeah... ok. You try making a profit with a business model like that. Let me know how it works out, k?

Score: 0

By PC_Tool

edited Jul 31, 2006 - 9:06 AM

You are quoting prices for shared hosting. This is entirely different. They pay for the hardware, and a guaranteed *dedicated* connection.

By nature, shared hosting means you are *sharing* that bandwidth with other sites. Of course it's going to be cheaper. It will also be unreliable, unstable, and limited.

Look up the monthly cost of an OC3 (~$30,000/mo) connection. Put a few of those together, and you *might* be a bit closer.

Score: 0

By VikingBlade

posted Jul 30, 2006 - 5:25 PM

Actually... it is so cheap because they are overselling. If every single customer used even 25% of the bandwidth consistently, the hosting company would go bankrupt.

Score: 0

By The MAZZTer

posted Jul 29, 2006 - 5:26 PM

Good thing I saved the installers...

Score: 0

By Adrian79

posted Jul 29, 2006 - 2:11 PM

"Microsoft charges for Office beta"

should of been the title of this article

Score: 0

By wincement

edited Jul 30, 2006 - 3:49 PM

No, because that's not true. A more accurate title would be:

Microsoft to charge for Office Beta downloads

The beta itself is still free. If you can find another place that hosts it, you don't have to pay Microsoft's download fee.

Score: 0

By jrizznit

posted Jul 28, 2006 - 9:59 PM

Office 2003 Pro retails for about $400. Does anybody know how many copies they have actually sold at that price? That's not rhetorical, I'm really asking.

Let's say they've sold 50 Million. That's 20 Billion in revenue, but the retailers and every other link in the distribution chain get a big cut of that.

How about they just put the program on bittorrent, and sell keys for 10 - 30 bucks, depending on the version. I'm just guessing, but I think they'd sell about a BILLION keys. I'd even buy one myself, finally. :)

If they average $20 a key, that's still 20 Billion dollars, but with practically ZERO distribution costs.

These numbers are obviously out of my ass, but if I'm even in the ballpark, then tell me this doesn't make good business sense.

Score: 0

By wincement

edited Jul 30, 2006 - 3:44 PM

The *only* problem with that plan that I can think of is that most PC users have no clue what Bittorrent even is. Maybe Opera will help with that a bit though. =)

(sorry, that was a bad pun)

Score: 0

By ^M^

posted Jul 31, 2006 - 3:59 AM

They could use a dedicated torrent client, as Blizzard does for WOW.
The system is rather efficient and it's a no brainer to use.

Score: 0

By PC_Tool

posted Jul 31, 2006 - 9:08 AM

Torrents are easily hacked.

Trackers are unsecure.

Microsoft would basically be forced to develop it's own tracker/client.

Why bother?

Score: 0

By jrizznit

posted Aug 1, 2006 - 12:25 PM

Why?

To cut distribution costs to nearly nothing. Why do that? To maximize profit margin. Trucks are expensive. Distributed filesharing is cheap. People get the same data either way.

Also unsure what you mean by torrents being easily hacked. HBO puts up dummy torrents and fake seeds for real torrents, none of which stops anyone from getting the file, it just makes it take a little longer. Is that the "hacking" you refer to? If there's a way to make a mangled piece of a torrent pass a hash check, I don't see why HBO wouldn't use that method also. Maybe HBO doesn't have any superhackers like you. :)

Score: 0

By DotNet_Coder

posted Jul 31, 2006 - 12:19 PM

Well, it's worth the bother to MSFT only because they could have a "real" download tool for all products. Right now, they have the download manager for subscriber downloads. I have to admit, it would be nice to have a BT style downloader for all MSFT products.

Besides, being forced to develop something? MSFT develops throw-away code daily at LABS, so what's one more thing to develop?

~dnc

Score: 0

By PC_Tool

posted Jul 31, 2006 - 1:02 PM

Microsoft is comiung out with a P2P type network, but I doubt they'll use it for beta distribution.

They use HTTP now, it works for the most part without much effort. Why fix what ain't broken?

Score: 0

By jrizznit

posted Jul 30, 2006 - 6:11 PM

The right BT client could fix that problem relatively quickly. (I'm completely ignorant of Opera.)

Definitely anyone with a dial-up connection is still going to need to buy a cd at the store, but, for everyone else, buying bits in a box is making less and less sense everyday. With the price of energy where it's at, it's time we stop using 18-wheelers to distribute software.

Score: 0

By aredo

posted Jul 30, 2006 - 5:50 AM

What are you talking about ?
Movies cost $100-300 million so what's your point? Should Lord Of The Rings cost $500 per DVD or more, perhaps ?

Software and video games are so much overpriced that that's insane. RIAA/MPAA already charge too much for Audio CDs, online DRM-infected Music and DVD movies BUT the software industry, with Microsoft being the worst one around, is way worse and prices keep increasing with the silly piracy excuses.
If they keep increasing product prices then copies are an obvious consequence. It's not that if they price higher people get richer and the ratio doesn't change. It does change indeed, and it changes for worse because higher prices make software and videogames products too expensive for the majority of people.
And this is not true capitalism. True capitalism demands that any seller tries to sell at the lowest possible price in order to have the largest customers base ever, and a satisfied customers base, not a frustrated one which is continously being accused of piracy and anything else in order to make a fool of them.

It's time the marketing people stop cheating on customers and price software products properly.

Score: 0

By jrizznit

posted Jul 30, 2006 - 2:15 PM

Was this reply directed at someone else?

I AGREE WITH YOU that Office is overpriced. That's my point - that MS could make more money by cutting their distribution costs to nothing and charging LESS for the product.

Score: 0

By wincement

posted Jul 30, 2006 - 3:45 PM

Just ignore aredo. Or better yet, join me in laughing at him.

He's pretty entertaining, actually.

Score: 0

By aredo

posted Jul 30, 2006 - 5:07 PM

I wonder if you are a Microsoft employee since you got so emotionally involved at trying insulting me that much just because I tried to point out the truth.
Either you are involved with Microsoft or you must be really naive, indeed.

Score: 0

By wincement

edited Jul 31, 2006 - 11:36 PM

Lol... yeah... I got emotional...

Not quite. I simply enjoy pointing out your complete and total lack of reason.

Prime example:
And Linux is the Mr.Gates trojan-horse to avoid any competition. If Linux didn't exist we might have had some real competition against Microsoft in the last 15 years.

Score: 0

By PC_Tool

posted Jul 31, 2006 - 9:10 AM

Likewise, I wonder if you got fired from microsoft....or perhaps they just laughed at your resume? Since you are so emotionally involved at trying to shout everyone who supports them down...

Score: 0

By xyzcb1

posted Jul 29, 2006 - 12:52 AM

no, it doesn't make good business sense. first of all, a big chuck of office's profit come from organizations like school, corporations, government and other big organization, and they don't have a physical copy for every computers they installed it on. they have those corp copy which can distribute through network.

and what make you think that a product like Office that cost ten of thousands people to creat and million hours into it will cost you a merely $20? I donno about you, 20 won't mean much nowaday, a full tank of gas cost twice or three time as much.

And people who pirate will always pirate, it does matter if it cost only $2.

IMO, Excel by itself worth $400.

Score: 0

By Maxteach1

posted Jul 29, 2006 - 10:16 PM

In fact the cost of the software for many places like schools is not much more than the $20 per system on the Select Licence or the schools use other offered ways to license all their system. For some the software is the business and as such it is a small investment.

Score: 0

By RPDP

posted Jul 29, 2006 - 3:12 AM

"IMO, Excel by itself worth $400"

Yes, thats right considering the tens of thousands people and millions of hours spent to create it.

But when considering the fact that a PC nowadays costs well below $400. The pricing is too high for an average or small businesses. Eventually M$ monopolizes this segment.

IMHO, M$ can tradeoff by reducing the prices of their products, instead of spending Millions of dollars in making its products pirate-proof and thereby in legal proceedings also.
Reduction in the prices would get a good customer base, by penetrating deeper into the market.

Score: 0

By deadmonkey

posted Jul 29, 2006 - 6:14 AM

Excel is a tool to do work to make money for your business (as is all of Office). You need to compare the cost to how much money it will bring into your company rather than compare it to how much a PC costs. $400 for a tool that will be used to complete 90% of your work means its value is circa 90% of your revenue, I would hope that is more than $400 (and now I am not saying MS should charge higher, its just that $400 is a very fair price for Office IMHO, it is a superb suite of tools).

Score: 0

By RPDP

posted Jul 29, 2006 - 12:57 PM

"$400 for a tool that will be used to complete 90% of your work means its value is circa 90% of your revenue"
This is not true all of the time and for all the people.
Its true that the Office suite is worth $400(or even more), but it still seems to be out of reach for common people.

Score: 0

By deadmonkey

edited Jul 29, 2006 - 6:47 PM

Agreed for home users its price is ott. Microsoft produce Works for home users however it isn't all that nice. I would like to see Microsoft make Word Express Edition and Excel Express Edition, etc. but with all the corporate features removed and perhaps not for commercial use. Great for home users and totally free. I wouldn't be surprised if we see Office Express Editions sometime in the near future. The more popular OpenOffice gets the more Microsoft will thinking of releasing a free version of Office. its not that they are worried, its just that they want to lock in as many people as possible. Sometimes it is worth some loss on free products to keep users.

Score: 0

By xyzcb1

posted Jul 30, 2006 - 10:38 AM

Coming out an Office Express version might be a good idea, and I wouldn't be surprise if MS does release something like this. It's good business promotion tools, and it will stop some of it's pirating issues.

Score: 0

By mshulman

posted Jul 30, 2006 - 3:17 PM

Even better, more people should take advantage of their academic pricing. I know it is available to college students, I'm not sure if it would be available for high school students or those even in middle school or lower.

At any rate, I'm certain college students do NOT take as much advantage of this as they can. Heck, I bought an academic version of Adobe Premier and have been able to get upgrade pricing ever since. I think maybe I've finally spent enough to match the full retail price!

Score: 0

By speedmeister

posted Jul 31, 2006 - 2:03 AM

So far as MS Office goes MS has done very little to prevent people who are ineligible from purchasing and using the academic version. Go to you local Best Buy or Fry's Electronics and you will find the academic version of MS Office on the shelf. The academic version has become the de facto legal version for the folks that can't qualify for some sort of volume licensing program.

So far as academic pricing goes on other products I think that most students don't take advantage of them because academic pricing on most high end products like some of Adobe's products are still fairly expensive even with the academic pricing. It is nice to hear that you got upgrade on your Adobe software. Most developers usually exclude academic license from upgrade eligibility.

Score: 0

By IMKey

posted Jul 28, 2006 - 8:42 PM

why doesn't MS just use bittorrent.... blizzard does... for wow updates... MS is like afraid of open source and free technologies...

Score: 0

By deadmonkey

posted Jul 29, 2006 - 6:51 PM

Microsoft don't like to use technology they did not create. Had MS created BitTorrent everything would use it from Windows Updates to MSDN however they didn't so they stick to regular downloads from a web server or FTM. There is no real reason they can't use a system like BitTorrent. They could create a custom client like Blizzard does and only allow that to download, they could even build it into FTM (File Transfer Manager, what MSDN uses to download) if they wanted easily enough. Microsoft would rather ship you a CD though than use BT. I mean they are a little crazy, they provide Word Documents in a MSI installer rather than just a simple PDF for documentation on some products which is just insane IMHO.

Score: 0

By xyzcb1

posted Jul 29, 2006 - 12:46 AM

this is been answer few weeks back. the reason that MS does not use bt because they cannot control the source. People can modify the source and put it on bt, and them ms get the blame.

Score: 0

By VikingBlade

posted Jul 28, 2006 - 11:33 PM

Personally I think it's kind of stupid to use bittorrent for a service you pay for. Blizzard should pony up the money and pay for more bandwidth instead of leeching off bandwidth from people who already give them $15 a month.

Score: 0

By crashoverride

posted Jul 28, 2006 - 8:59 PM

That's just it the management at Microsoft would rather eat nails than do that.

Score: 0

By AlexBR1974

posted Jul 28, 2006 - 8:39 PM

You will always be able to download Office via BitTorrent etc. So do not worry, Office has been and will always be free! At least for me. I love Office, especially the 2007 version, but I will never pay 100, 200, 300, 500 dollars or whatever for it. I get it for free and period. If you are so worried about piracy and all this crap, use OpenOffice.

Score: 0

By Metshrine

posted Jul 28, 2006 - 9:22 PM

So, you'd rather go through the extra trouble of pirating it than use a free office suite like openoffice? Wow, the world is a great place today!

Score: 0

By AlexBR1974

posted Jul 28, 2006 - 10:19 PM

"extra trouble of pirating it"??? You are joking right? hahahahahah So you´d rather use a crappy, ugly software like OpenOffice? MS Office 2007 is great and the interface is beautiful, and I do care about that! But I ain´t paying 400 bucks for that, Period. You are a joke, man!!!!

Score: 0

By smarterthanyou

posted Jul 29, 2006 - 2:25 AM

A high quality computer software product should cost a lot of money. Personally, I'm glad Microsoft is making product activation more of a nightmare for those who would illegally pirate software. WGA for Windows XP for example is one of the best things that could happen to people who use pirated software.

I just wish that people who have legally obtained a license to use a software product didn't have to suffer through product activation.

Score: 0

By aredo

posted Jul 30, 2006 - 5:54 AM

Why ? Why should it cost a lot of money ?
Do ultra-expensive high budget movies like Lord of the Rings cost $500 per DVD copy or more, perhaps ?
No, they don't.
Does the hardware cost a lot of money, perhaps ? No, it doesn't. A CPU should cost $10,000 or more based on your way of thinking. Hardware manufacturers have to spend a lot more money on development costs than any software house out there, so why software products and videogames have to be priced so high ?

Score: 0

By deadmonkey

posted Jul 29, 2006 - 6:56 PM

While I disagree with software piracy I think WGA will just force more people to pirate. WGA has already wrongly accused people who legally purchased copies of Windows, one being Paul Thurrot!, and, if there were stats, you would see it does nothing to stop pirates. So far every version of WGA has been crasked in no time at all. Adding WGA to Office will just force more people to learn how to get around it. I do not know what the answer to piracy is however it certinaly is not WGA or WPA. They are just an insult to paying customers.

Score: 0

By aredo

posted Jul 30, 2006 - 5:59 AM

The only possible answer is to price products properly for the masses like true capitalism demands.
It could be understood if a software product is really expensive because only a few thousands specific customers exist in the whole world for it but otherwise pricing products as high as software houses do it's just a way to rip customers off. The problem is that nowadays 90%+ of software houses out there do the same as Microsoft and have no respect for customers and no politicians nor judges do nothing in order to enforce true capitalism and competition in the market.

Score: 0

By AlexBR1974

posted Jul 29, 2006 - 4:53 PM

WGA has continually been cracked. You guys never learn... Cause there are people smarter than you!! Hehehe

Score: 0

By GoodThings2Life

posted Jul 28, 2006 - 7:09 PM

This is the best release of Office to date, so it's actually worth full price, nevermind the $1.50.

Score: 0

By PhoenixPath

posted Jul 28, 2006 - 7:30 PM

Oh, I don't mind it a bit....

Score: 0

By 1uk3

edited Jul 28, 2006 - 6:36 PM

[...]and Beta 2 users will not be charged for a Technical Refresh build that is expected to be released in the coming weeks.

So I guess that Beta 2 users (myself being one) will receive the download for free via Microsoft Update.

Score: 0

By Mark Gillespie

posted Jul 28, 2006 - 5:04 PM

Now it's $1.50, that should kill the demand considerably.

Score: 0

By PC_Tool

posted Jul 28, 2006 - 5:13 PM

Which I believe is the point, not that they'd ever admit to it.

The PR of dropping it would be a nightmare, so they'll price it to a point where the demand falls off to a mere trickle.

Score: 0

By PC_Tool

edited Jul 28, 2006 - 4:50 PM

In fact, the demand has been so high that the company has decided to begin charging customers $1.50 USD for the download beginning August 2.

That sucks.

'Sokay though. It'll be available for free elsewhere. It'll only be $1.50 if ya download it from MS.

has decided to add the small fee as a "cost recovery measure" for future downloads.

More like a deterrent. It's not like they're going to use the money to increase the bandwidth on future beta releases...

Score: 0

By reubentech

edited Jul 30, 2006 - 1:52 AM

I've been testing this version of office for over two weeks. As for this Office 2007 version I think I'll pass. I'll just stick to Office 2003.

Score: 0

By PhoenixPath

posted Jul 30, 2006 - 3:07 PM

???

Um...

Ok?

Score: 0

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