After exceeding their expected number of downloads of the Office 2007 Beta by 500%, Microsoft is planning to charge a nominal fee of $1.50 per download to cover their server costs for the Beta 2 release as of August 1. Microsoft Australia is discontinuing downloads of the beta all together.
“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,” the representative said. Does anyone think that once they have a simple way to cover their costs for an unreleased product that they will give it up in the future. Maybe they will give it up, but as with their claim that future OS launches will not be plagued by the delays that they have in the past, I take what they say with a grain of salt.
