Short Sighted Thinking At Its Best

Microsoft is offering a free test drive of Office 2007, but they recently announced that they will be charging $1.50 per download starting on August 2. So if you want to try it out for free, do it before tomorrow.

A Microsoft representative said on Friday, "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 representative said. "The fee helps offset the cost of downloading from the servers."

Wow, Microsoft needs to offset the cost of their advertising, and they want you and me to pay for it. I thought that's what we did when we bought Microsoft products? Maybe they shouldn't have offered the free download if they couldn't afford it or didn't know how to budget for it? And who actually believes Microsoft can't afford it? They want us to find the bugs in their new software (it's a beta release), report it to them, and pay for it while we're at it!

They have over 3 million people interested in Office 2007 without spending a dime yet on television / radio / print advertising. This is the epitomy of short-sighted thinking on Microsoft's part. I can't seem to pull any sympathy out of my sympathy well.

. . . Stephanie

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