Microsoft to charge for beta

Microsoft's explanation for this is: "The fee helps offset the cost of downloading from the servers." It reckons that since the beta was released back in May [2006], it's been downloaded three million times.

So if it gets downloaded another three million times, Microsoft would earn another $4.5 million. That's an awful lot of money just for a bit of extra capacity on their servers.

Updates will still be made available for free, however.

According to the report on ZDnet , "This is the first time Microsoft has charged for an Office beta, and it's not something that is planned for on a repeat basis," a spokesperson said. In the past, the Beast has charged for sending beta disks out to people, however.

It's also much cheaper than the Mac community has come to expect. The public version of OS X cost $20 on disk with no download possible. µ

L'INQ
ZDnet