First sign of MS RENTAL-WARE!!!

[angels355]

There has been some talk and speculation about the possibility of MS transitioning to a pay as you go, rental-ware, program instead of the current program where you pay for the software up front and never pay again. MS is now testing a pay as you go program in some foreign countries for Office 2003! Is this going to be the future for all MS products in the future? Novell (MS "wannabe") and their business Suse charges x dollars for every year that you want to use their biz Suse OS. I sure hope that MS is not going to use such a program in their future products.

http://blogs.zdnet.com/microsoft/?p=228&tag=nl.e622

[loki]

The difference between Novell's plan and Microsoft's is that most of the code in Suse Linux is GPL (ie. open source) code and you could just download and run it yourself for free. What they're charging for is the support of that code. People wondered how anyone could take on Microsoft and win, well, with their product activation, exorbitant prices and the possibility of a subscription model, they might just do themselves in.

loki

[jetguy35]

If that ever happened, I would just use the previous version of windows that wasn't pay as you go. Pay as you go is rubbish. I'm not going to buy a single program over and over again just because they want more money. Unless the pay as you go was something very small. Like the price of paying for an xbox live membership. Anything pay as you go kind of sucks though. I have probably spent over $200 on xbox live membership since it came out for original xbox and also have paid for my brother's membership for the past year. And xbox live isn't even a program that I can physically take and use as I please. If I stop paying, they take away the benefits. Oh well. Some things in life aren't fair. But like my previous statement, if that ever happened, I would just use the previous version of windows that wasn't pay as you go

Ben

[angels355]

jetguy,

That is really nice of you to watch out for your brother.

loki,

Thanks for the clarification on the biz Suse. I heard that they are going to develop their own upgraded version of Openoffice, which the opensource people at Openoffice.org are saying is not going to continue to benefit from opensource development.

I sure hope that Microsoft does not alienate their customers with their latest business decisions. I didn't like the FSX activation programming for quite some time, however I've gone to extraordinary lengths to communicate with Microsoft, and I've really gotten some insight on things. For one thing, I'm no longer worried about MS's new products deactivating permanently after support for them is dropped. They have convinced me that, that is not something we'll have to worry about. Remember how I was saying how I was worried about running FSX in 10 years, that after it is no longer supported that maybe it won't be activated any more? Well on that point, I am no longer worried, they have convinced me that that is something we do not need to worry about.

I'd like to see Microsoft do well, but I'm not going to worry about their management decisions. I'll probably get FSX DLX, and some other new MS products, but have also developed some respect and appreciation for Linux and Apple products so may expand in those areas.

When you think about it, Vista is an incredible accomplishment. The production of Vista was such a gigantic operation, that one software engineer was saying that he would write code and submit it to his node, then it would take 3 to 4 months for his code to migrate and show up on the main root node. Vista is probably more complex than a 747, and yet you can hold the box in your hand, and install it on your desktop.

Very approximately MS owns 85% of the entire computer market share, if you only consider the pc market I'm guessing the number goes up to 95%. And here people have been worrying about how well Vista is going to be doing in sales after 5 years of development and great expectations. But Vista is basically shipping out with nearly every single new pc! What exactly is there for them to worry about? To me, that's like a poker player holding four Aces and still worrying how he's going to be doing in the game! So I have confidence that Microsoft will pull through. We should be so lucky to go through life with only four Aces in hand!

I think MS is quietly exploring the possibility of pay as you go software. There was a similar situation in the athletic industry, people would pay $500 to $2000 for a "lifetime no dues" athletic club membership, then much to the chagrine of the operators of the club those members would take them up on that deal, and continue to come into the club for twenty years!! So the club made no money on them. They would bring in friends who would join, but it would really irk management that they would continue to come in decade after decade and not have to pay anything. So many ahtletic clubs switched to a system where every member has to pay a monthly dues fee. So in a likewise manner, I think that MS would want to be able to collect revenue from all of their users every month or year. I hope it never comes to that.