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TOPIC: The Hidden Cost of Microsoft's 'Free' Online Office Suite

barney

Administrator / Manager

Status: Offline

Posts: 2499

Date: Jul 19, 2009

The Hidden Cost of Microsoft's 'Free' Online Office Suite	Permalink

Nothing is free........ Despite what you’ve heard, the online version of Office 2010 announced by Microsoft earlier this week won’t be free to corporate users, and isn’t a threat to the likes of Google, Adobe, or even Zoho, which sells online productivity software to small and medium-sized businesses. It’s true that Microsoft will offer consumers a free “lightweight” version of Office 2010 through their Windows Live (formerly Hotmail) accounts. But that largess doesn’t extend to business customers, who will either have to pay a subscription fee or purchase corporate access licenses (CALs) for Office in order to be given access to the online application suite. Microsoft already does this with email – the infamous Outlook Web Access (or OWA, pronounced ow!-wah! because of the painful user experience). But wait – there’s more! A Microsoft spokesperson told me that customers will need to buy a SharePoint server, which ranges from $4,400 plus CALs or $41,000, all CALs included if they want to share documents using the online version of Office 2010. "Free" Office 2010 __________________ http://www.mycomputerplayground.com http://www.digitaldrama.net http://www.thisrules.net

Vindicated

Administrator / Manager

Status: Offline

Posts: 2410

Date: Jul 19, 2009

	Permalink
To quote Ross Perrault, "The Devil's In The Details". Seems individual (non-business) users are largely unaffected though. __________________ Vindicated

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