Microsoft Corp. will begin selling its Office programs to consumers on a subscription basis starting mid-July, in a bid to reach thrifty PC buyers who would otherwise pass on productivity software.
…where “pass on” means “pirate”.
The Microsoft Equipt bundle … includes Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote, plus OneCare and a handful of existing free Windows Live applications. Buying those programs the traditional way would cost about $200 … Under the subscription model, upgrading to a new version is included in the annual cost.
$70 per year indefinitely, or $200 once, for a product with a 2- to 4-year update cycle that most people don’t update to every new version? That’s not a very good deal.
(Note that the lack of Outlook and Access make this very unfriendly to business users, so this is clearly targeted at the home market.)
Microsoft has been warming people up to the idea of subscription software pricing for years (this was one of the original intentions of the .NET brand). There are a number of advantages to them:
- They get paid a flat rate regardless of whether they make any updates. Notice how their update schedule for many products has slowed:
- Windows: 1998, 2000, 2001, 2007
- Office: 1999, 2001, 2003, 2007
- They don’t need to add compelling new features in updates. The incentive to innovate and improve is completely removed. They especially need this for Office, for which most people don’t use most features introduced in the last decade.
- There’s no longer an incentive to schedule releases to boost specific quarterly or annual earnings.
- People don’t often buy every version of Office — many skip versions because the upgrades are expensive and usually not very compelling.
- They can enforce timebomb versions and mandatory updates. (Imagine if they forced all Windows XP users to update to Vista.)
- They will make more money per paying user, on average, over time.
- People often forget about subscriptions and continue to automatically pay for them for months or years after they’ve stopped using the service.
The benefits to the consumer are:
Great. Sign me up!
I know! Headphones! Wow! Thanks for telling me!
Ricky Van Veen:
They could have remained on if they had played by China’s rules and allowed the government to censor their content. But unlike Google and Yahoo and everybody else, Mark Zuckerberg refused to play by their rules and told them to go fuck themselves.
Hats off to you, Mark.
Wow. Facebook did something good. Nice job, Facebook.
The vast majority of the time, the door-close button on elevators doesn’t do anything. This is the case for the elevators in our office building.
When they’re in the lobby, and someone pushes a floor button, the elevators wait for an extra 5 seconds before closing the doors. This is an optimization to accumulate additional passengers — when lots of people are coming in and out of the lobby all the time, you don’t want elevators going up with just one person in them.
Inevitably, people start getting impatient and hitting the door-close button after about 4 seconds. It doesn’t do anything, but the doors close a second or two later regardless, so people think they’ve affected the outcome, and they push the door-close button again the next time. If they push the button too soon, and the elevator waits a few more seconds before closing the doors, the people assume that it’s just being slow today or they didn’t hit the button hard enough.
They never consider the possibility that their action is not related to the result.
This is why superstition works. Animals learn it, too. “If I perform this action, I get this result.” It takes a more advanced or analytical mind to consider performing a test: “If I take no action, will I get this result anyway?”
I secretly think less of door-close people in the elevator.
Existing AT&T customers who are not currently eligible for an upgrade discount can purchase iPhone 3G for $399 for the 8GB model or $499 for the 16GB model. Both options require a new two-year service agreement.
That’s for people who are in the middle of an AT&T contract (except iPhone owners), like if you just started an AT&T contract with a free RAZR a few months ago.
In the future, AT&T will offer a no-contract-required option for $599 (8GB) or $699 (16GB).
There we go: that’s the real price of the new iPhone if you need to buy one without a contract subsidy (e.g. if you drop yours in the toilet).
That’s comparable to most smartphones. Most dumbphones are in the $300 range.
New Y Combinator startup Sad Trombone launched recently with what might be the simplest blogging platform to date. Yes, it’s even easier to use than Tumblr, which has a cult-following of users who like to post lots of pictures and short messages.
Here’s how you use Sad Trombone: push the “play!” button. You’re done.
Is this a lot like Tumblr? Yes, although the fast 0-step account registration is a great way to help this spread via mobile devices (you have to create an account on Tumblr’s website first, then you can start emailing to a unique email id). Sad Trombone also has a huge ad and Digg/Del.icio.us spam links, something Tumblr is just starting to roll out to zero users.
Another great thing about Sad Trombone - you can press the “play!” button as many times as you want to hear the “sad trombone” clip indefinitely (I wish Tumblr had that feature). If you choose to copy and paste the URL, you can also spam your friends and coworkers with Sad Trombone.
The services are otherwise somewhat similar.
