Office joker

Microsoft was very clear about its reasons for promoting the Office 2007 beta 2 so heavily: it wanted to get as much usage in the wild as possible. It was the perfect way to iron out any minor niggles in the pre-release code and to gauge user opinion on the dramatic changes it brings, most notably the new ribbon menu format.

But it seems the trial has proved too popular. As of tomorrow, the software giant will start charging people $1.50 per download, all for the privilege of helping out one of the most affluent companies in the world. Microsoft rakes in billions of dollars per quarter, but apparently needs to recoup a few pennies per download on the basis of soaring bandwidth costs.

Not a great PR move, but then, Microsoft doesn’t need to be everyone’s friend. Three million people have already downloaded the Office 2007 code, so the company has got enough free testers. It’s already got 400 million fully-paid up Office users, and the vast majority of those haven’t even heard of OpenOffice, let alone considered switching to it. And those that aren’t willing to spend $1.50 can still play with the new productivity suite via the free web-based test drive. Job done.