MS to charge 1.50US per Office 2007 beta downloads

[disciple]

Microsoft plans next week to charge a nominal fee for Office 2007 Beta 2 downloads, in a move that runs counter to the practice held by most software companies.

Consumers who download the 2007 Microsoft Office system Beta 2 will be charged $1.50 per download, beginning next Wednesday at 6 p.m. PDT, a Microsoft spokeswoman said.

"Since the end of May, Beta 2 has been downloaded more than 3 million times...That's 500 percent more than what was expected," the spokeswoman said. "The fee helps offset the cost of downloading from the servers."

http://news.com.com/Microsoft+to+charge+for+Office+beta/2100-1012_3-6099987.html?tag=nefd.top

of course, it'll just appear on torrent , nonetheless...

[Spazosaurus]

of course, it'll just appear on torrent , nonetheless...

Spot on there m8

[TrinireturnofGamez]

 i'm sure MS is making a profit off that... Else they much to dotish NOT to use a peer to peer system like Bittorrent and save money.

[disciple]

well yeh.. adspace on the site! lol


if they use torrent to distribute, then they would be acknowledgin that p2p is a legitimate delivery method..  ( though novell uses it for opensuse,and also many open source projects)

when XP sp2 came out, they had sen out cease an desist letters to a coupke sites that  seedin it, ( even though is a free upgrade.. and the sites weren't warez oriented )


i suppose too that they probably afraid that if they offer it via torrent some dude go end up injectin somethin in the file, and wham! a million zombies, and microsoft to be blamed..

yeh they could use checksums, but to the average user( and is ms.. they haev PLENTY avg users) md5 might as well be greek

side note.. any time someone tells me how 'bittorrent have plenty viruses' i feel to strangle them..lol