Microsoft slashes prices to fend off Chinese pirates

Can I buy 50 copies of that for my company?
(In English)

Why is M$ doing it only over there?
Why not for everybody?

Another reason to hate M$ :-)

Why pay anything for MS Office when OpenOffice looks nearly exactly the same. It's so similar you will almost not notice the difference.

You can save your files in any MS Office format too, so no compatibility problems with opening or being emailed a file.

So why pay for Office when you can get it for free, legally.

Now....if they'd only slash the prices everywhere else, everyone would happily purchase their software.

Maybe we should all pirate Windows in the UK and then Microsoft will have no choice but to lower the price here.

I think its great that piracy is rewarded by a country-wide price cut! Nice one Macroshaft!

So the moral of the story is if you want Microsoft to drop the cost of its software by 90% in your country, everyone should blatantly run pirated copies until they cave in. I'll start the ball rolling, who's with me ?

If they can afford to sell it for $29 in China, they can sell it for that everywhere else!

Whatta rip-off for the rest of us on the planet...

Alright y'all let's boycot the thing till MS drops our price as well.......

LoCatus

Our Friend, Msr. Ballmer from Microsoft announced yesterday that plans NOT to Retire from Microsoft, EVER.
Good Move Toward Immortality. 

Might be Rigidity thang.
drashek

Very interesting plan MS has but will $29 change anything when a pirated copy is $1
I'll have to followup on this story.
Thank You

No comment on the article itself, other than it was well written and interesting.. But I absolutely loved the final line:

"Chinese pirates must be shivering in their timbers." 

That's awesome. Not often a sideways pun can make me laugh.

... rather then "pirates".

MS Office comes for a price, OpenOffice and Symphony comes for zero Dollars.

The market for office software is still open, this is why MS must make sure that people in the Peoples Republic of China use MS-office.

OpenOffice has caught up a lot, a new user will be very happy with it. No need for MS-office acutally. OpenOffice just does what most of the casual user and office users ever will need.

Slashing prices for the home-and-student version of MS-Office in China has nothing to do with pirates. It's because of competition. 

The market is is still open in China with respect to Office software. MS Windows is already de-facto standard. MS-Office not yet. OpenOffice could easily take this space. 

So it is competition that drives Microsoft, not the pirates.


And, you may notice, that
Windows Vista does not enjoy a price cut.
Not at all.

How come?

Is greed actually the real [and not the alternate] word for piracy or is it some copycat working down the dungeon, howsoever the justification may be. Depends if you are the top or the bottom doggie, of course, for a terrorist is merely your demonised opponent by any other name [because evil cannot-be-absolute/does-not-emerges-from-nothing-or-for-no-reason]. As in all matters absolute, it is the motive which judges, not moralising/intellectualising masquerading as logic and truth.

Since ALL that any human can claim ownership to originated [as far as science can ascertain] freely from The Sun, can any thief bequeathed his loot without attaching its guilt, regardless of how it is excused? It depends whether one is really guilty or not, of course, and guilt is merely the history one clings onto. You want glory/latent-anger, have the history/guilt too for the two are merely the different facets/timing of the same aspect or else race, say, is not just skin deep whilst not forgetting that culture has no racial divide.

Profits, in the days when money-trees are non-existent and the printing-of-money by any TD&H is “counterfeiting”, economies-of-scale [EoS] monitors greed but since the dawning of the digital replicant, every screw-cum-nut is trying to justify perpetual income as reality. Input + Deserved Profit = Output no longer applies because greed/profit’s moment has arrived. In matters digital, fear replaces EoS. Empires or rationalities will always fall and the perpetual income screws should never have it easy no matter how they justify “intellectual property rights”. The right to protect the scent of your soiled underwear, due to the unique way that your intellect guides your genetics into generating that gifted scent, should be exposed as mere fetishism, no if’s and but’s, and you are free to market it during your whipping sessions – in the privacy of your voids and not to main-stream it as patentable merchandise. Fethism, the underlying control-freak within intellect, is what drives intellectual activities.

Fashion is marketing junk as “intelligence”, “sophistication”, and similar nonsensical excuses for reality, and no matter if all within the human poplulation disagree, so long as Intelligence does, that is all that matters for Intelligence has the sole ability to cast devolution back into its scented voids whilst not forgetting that junk is not some oriental boat but is that which memerises the blinded blankness into feeling/thinking that they are in possesion-of/association-with something meaningful. Is that why people are throwing away fully working gadgetries, utilities, cars, software, hardware and more, including their partners, spouses, children and even methods of “Saving The Earth”, for the next flashy model,? 

By what means do excitements employ to turn blankness into junk addicts, rejecting sanity, love & peace? Afterall, worship is not when you do something “holy” and “pious”. Worship is what you hold as dear-to-your-heart. Stupidity and dumbness, no less, and the stupidity-cum-dumbness [because in truth, like attracts like whereas in untruth, opposites attract] in contemporary software, say, is that mere whips can be further upgraded into those tipped with barbs. Truly a contol-freak’s paradise – “so long as you pay and then recognise that we are your intellectual property owners, you are then privileged to try our latest “squiddy” update, the one that we’ve patented with more hooks than you can wet-dream about.” 

It would be enlightening to understand and then realise that you cannot improve on reality, only on illusions and imaginations. Without exception. How many actually can see, let alone realise, that democracy is merely abandonment in practice/reality when there is no morality and that morality is not moralising nor is it about rights & wrongs, the favourite playground for mental patients like intellectuals/law-makers/politicians-cum-almighties-in-residence ? Pirates are those who rob you of your sanity and replaces it with fashion/”intellectual-property”. Intelligence only exists when functionality do not equate price for Love, the only power that is real and is why the vast majority of people respond to love postively time and again, be it honesty in marketing/pricing or contrition-to-an –error, say, and Love has no price – because it is priceless/infinite, whereas pretenders-to-the-throne will always priced their junk at the level where your sanity is either removed/owned or [retained but] damaged [hating/dissenting]. There isn’t one single idiot or lunatic [aka hypocrite] who doesn’t know that humanity’s problems are due to their excesses which is why crooks/profiteers/real-pirates insist on sharing their loot. C’mon, you know you want it … shivering up yer timbers ….

Now, will the pirates lower their prices more? Viva competition.

or may be, get them young?

'Cos the chinese at my local Lidl carpark always come up and says "D-B-D" some times you can't even understand what they are saying.

If you ever buy one of these horse poo, you'll realise it's some guy at the cinema holding a camera. Sound is sh*t and people are always standing up and the picture quality sucks balls.

Now i just tell em, look i can always do what you have done and download these low quality bullsh*t, but i can't be bothered to waste time watching and wasting my time. Instead i'll rent the thing - can't stand cinemas - especially when after the movie you feel sleepy.... and the noise from people.

Also triple A films need to be on your collectors list and HMV will do a deal anyway.

Jon.