Yikes. The Wall Street Journal reports that Microsoft will begin an experiment next month renting Microsoft Office at Internet cafes in New York City’s Times Square. According to the report they’re going to charge $2 per session for using Microsoft Office.
That ridiculously high fee looks even worse when you consider that’s on top of the hourly fees at the Internet cafe,
The Microsoft software rental program will debut in easyEverythingÂ’ s New York facility and later be available in its existing cafes in Europe. The charge for using the software comes on top of easyEverythingÂ’s time-based usage fees, which currently range from 17 pence (27 cents) an hour in the middle of the night to 3 British pounds ($4.31) an hour during peak periods. Currently, easyEverything customers can use MicrosoftÂ’s scaled-down Works suite of software without paying an extra fee.
I don’t think consumers will stand for this. One of the places i occasionally use while traveling is Kinko’s which usually has pretty nice Windows boxes complete with the latest software such as Photoshop, Office, etc., at pretty decent prices (they are often more expensive than the cyber cafes, to be sure). If I have to pay an additional per-session fee for using an Office application or any other application, the price would be far too high and I’d either avoid using such places or ask for the machine with Star Office installed, thank you very much.
Contrary to the U.S. courts I don’t think Microsoft has anything close to a software monopoly and if it tries to charge monopoly-like prices, Microsoft will quickly find out that it needs Office users far more than Officer users need it.