The "catch" with Microsoft's "free" online Office
Jul 20, 2009 8:10:54 GMT
Post by CharlieChomper on Jul 20, 2009 8:10:54 GMT
Recently, Microsoft had announced they would supposedly be offering a "free" online version of their Office suite (or, at least, part of it, and very "watered down" compared to the full price form of it) to users of it's Windows Live (ie formally Hotmail) services.
The "catch" however is that "corporate" users (this is not limited to just companies, but would also include government agencies, school districts, various organizations, etc. who would choose to make use of it) are not only required to pay for the service (via either an annual "subscription license" or having to purchase a specialized license which would only be good until whenever the next version of Office was released and the whole process begins anew), but are required to purchase specialized commercial servers that run a specialized application from Microsoft (which has been known to have had more than its share of problems, to put it mildly...and ranges in price from $4,400/€ 3107.28 to $41,000/€ 28954.20 in costs for "corporate" server licensing fees*) and which usually only works with a Microsoft browser (it is possible to attempt to access it through Firefox--unfortunately, not without issues, especially with respect to more advanced "features" and access (as all the coding involved is Microsoft's, they are not required to make things compliant with anything other than their own software, just as they chose to implement the use of ActiveX--which only their own browsers even can make use of) as well as just a special corporate license for said application in order to be able to share the output of these tools with other users just within the workplace in question.
For those curious as to what this version may include (and who are familiar with it or still even remember it), think pf something similar to Microsoft Works (at least, that has been what has so far been indicated--this is subject to change, however). For those who don't remember it or have never used Works, you can think of it as a very basic word processing/spreadsheet tool in this context--save that the output is not Office-compatible (it can open a standard Office file, but you can't save it in any standard Office format), as Microsoft is still hoping to get people to purchase their more expensive Office suite.
However, it should also be noted that this would not be the first time the company has released a pay application of late tied into Office--what had been Outlook has become a subscription-only service (it was the first application they took to offering online), especially on the corporate level (and has proven extremely painful from in just the area of usability/user-friendiness for the most part). So, there was some discussion about the possibility of something like this happening and using Outlook as a "trial" of sorts to test things out. However, no one thought they would take it to the levels they are proposing...
For regular users/consumer-level, so far, you can expect the same "lightweight" (as the company is referring to it) applications and issues, but without the costs.
*the reason for the discrepancies largely has to do with the complexities involved in corporate-level server licenses as it's not a "one size fits all" license nor even a single "standard" license, but something much more complicated and dependent upon various factors involved or even tied into the servers, themselves (which, themselves, can vary a great deal...)--these numbers also do not include the cost of the actual hardware that would be involved nor the cost of Windows licensing fees and actually are amounts that came from Microsoft directly. Likewise, this is only the server-side costs and does not include the costs of software that the actual user would need to gain access to this nor even the costs for the licenses to allow for even just the allowance of basic search-related features and options for this software, nor other features related to internet usage.
The "catch" however is that "corporate" users (this is not limited to just companies, but would also include government agencies, school districts, various organizations, etc. who would choose to make use of it) are not only required to pay for the service (via either an annual "subscription license" or having to purchase a specialized license which would only be good until whenever the next version of Office was released and the whole process begins anew), but are required to purchase specialized commercial servers that run a specialized application from Microsoft (which has been known to have had more than its share of problems, to put it mildly...and ranges in price from $4,400/€ 3107.28 to $41,000/€ 28954.20 in costs for "corporate" server licensing fees*) and which usually only works with a Microsoft browser (it is possible to attempt to access it through Firefox--unfortunately, not without issues, especially with respect to more advanced "features" and access (as all the coding involved is Microsoft's, they are not required to make things compliant with anything other than their own software, just as they chose to implement the use of ActiveX--which only their own browsers even can make use of) as well as just a special corporate license for said application in order to be able to share the output of these tools with other users just within the workplace in question.
For those curious as to what this version may include (and who are familiar with it or still even remember it), think pf something similar to Microsoft Works (at least, that has been what has so far been indicated--this is subject to change, however). For those who don't remember it or have never used Works, you can think of it as a very basic word processing/spreadsheet tool in this context--save that the output is not Office-compatible (it can open a standard Office file, but you can't save it in any standard Office format), as Microsoft is still hoping to get people to purchase their more expensive Office suite.
However, it should also be noted that this would not be the first time the company has released a pay application of late tied into Office--what had been Outlook has become a subscription-only service (it was the first application they took to offering online), especially on the corporate level (and has proven extremely painful from in just the area of usability/user-friendiness for the most part). So, there was some discussion about the possibility of something like this happening and using Outlook as a "trial" of sorts to test things out. However, no one thought they would take it to the levels they are proposing...
For regular users/consumer-level, so far, you can expect the same "lightweight" (as the company is referring to it) applications and issues, but without the costs.
*the reason for the discrepancies largely has to do with the complexities involved in corporate-level server licenses as it's not a "one size fits all" license nor even a single "standard" license, but something much more complicated and dependent upon various factors involved or even tied into the servers, themselves (which, themselves, can vary a great deal...)--these numbers also do not include the cost of the actual hardware that would be involved nor the cost of Windows licensing fees and actually are amounts that came from Microsoft directly. Likewise, this is only the server-side costs and does not include the costs of software that the actual user would need to gain access to this nor even the costs for the licenses to allow for even just the allowance of basic search-related features and options for this software, nor other features related to internet usage.
