Microsoft Launches Prepaid Office

[CadCrazy]

Microsoft today launched "Office Professional 2007 Prepaid Edition" in the country, bringing the power of its Office productivity suite to home users and small businesses at an affordable price.

The "Office Professional 2007 Prepaid Edition" subscription plan gives customers the flexibility to pay as they go, and renew when they choose. Besides, it does not require any credit facility, additional contracts, or commitments.

Sanjay Manchanda, director (Information Worker Business Group) of Microsoft, said they are seeing strong demand from small and medium businesses for such applications.

With the introduction of "Office Professional 2007 Prepaid Edition", customers can purchase a 'Prepaid Starter Kit' for a six month subscription.

A 25 character product key on the back of each kit activates their software over the Internet for this period. Customers can renew their subscription via a three month 'Prepaid Renewal Card' that costs Rs 1,299.

Even when the subscription expires, customers can continue to access, view, and print existing Office documents/data. However to be able to create new files or modify existing ones, they would need an active subscription. At any stage, customers can choose to convert their prepaid subscription to a perpetual license.

Source

[Charan]

More money lost for the Customers. Who are willing to pay Rs. 1300 every 3 months.. its better for them to get OOo.

[cool_techie_tvm]

Had read the same in today's hindu

[Cool G5]

Oo is better than this 1.3k for 3 months.

[[xubz]]

Buying Office Student Edition for ~6k is better than paying 1.3k for every 2 months.
(It contains only Word, Excel and Powerpoint, Which is more than enough)

[bikdel]

^^ +1


also what MS is doing is really stupid...

Every One think about the future man... Who would do this kinda work:

"Okay i will use this MS OFFICE for 3 months and shift to OpenOffice.org"

the money will be sheer waste...
this plan wont bring ant outcome.. people who use Office will buy the Full one, who dont want to use will use other office suites.....

[narangz]

Simply Idiotic.

[naveen_reloaded]

Not a good move.may be some non techie man will do this ...

[azzu]

yup
not so god move

[DigitalDude]

haha you ppl do realise that there are millions of ppl who are not techies and have not even remotely heard of open office. if you say office it is MS office to them. not all people out there are tech savvy, visit tech forums like this, and download and use open office.

for some home users this may sound stupid because most use pirated copies. and for commercial users this really good I think.

honestly how many among us only use open office ? and open office is good for a home user but has lot of challenges to tackle before businesses adopt it.

they have been using this for years and 'change' is what people dont like. I have seen this first hand. people fight to get MS office back on their systems.

The thing is most of the businesses already use MS office and if you are running your business the last thing you want is IT incompatibility between you and suppliers/vendors etc.

also a point to consider is the compatibility with other collaboration/email software of MS like sharepoint, exchange server etc


@xubz business people cannot use student edition and also lot of collaborative features are not there in student edition



_

[Cool G5]

^I agree with your say.But unless one change their mindset that office means MS office,openoffice can't excel among masses.
BTW earlier i also used pirated MS office now i switched to Open office & it's simply great.

[sakumar79]

For most SMB purposes, OpenOffice.org is sufficient... In our office, we dont use MS Office (except having Word Viewer for checking)... We have Lotus Smartsuite (123 and Wordpro) and currently moving to OpenOffice.org... Either is enough for regular usage...

It is either lack of awareness and reluctance to change that is the cause for people still using MS Office in pirated version... Slowly, this will change as our economy improves...

The MS Prepaid Office package has been in the works for quite some time I think, but I feel they havent done a good job in selecting the pricing...

Arun

[DigitalDude]

^^^^

yeah Microsoft pricing always s u c k s

[CadCrazy]

I am using Open Office. Now i say office does't mean MS office, open office is quite good. Why to use pirated ms office when something equally good is available for free.

[praka123]

i am a OO.o user full time.it is underestimated or people are not aware of alternatives.
no M$ office for me.and i am on Linux too. 8)