Microsoft: We’re Taking Software Off the Desktop and Moving It to … Circuit City
by John Paczkowski
Posted on July 2, 2008 at 1:45 PM PT
Microsoft is moving desktop computing to the cloud, but if you want to come along, you’ve got to change planes at Circuit City (CC).
This afternoon, Microsoft (MSFT) officially announced “Equipt,” a new package of low-end productivity software and hosted services. Essentially a subscription version of Microsoft Office, Equipt includes the latest versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote, as well as Office Live Workspace, Windows Live OneCare and an assortment of Windows Live tools. The price? $69.99 per year.
But you have to make a trip to Circuit City, which will begin offering Equipt exclusively on July 5 (great choice of partners, guys).
A trip to the local big-box retailer? Interesting way to transition software users from a purchase-to-own model to a subscription-based one. Then again, $200+ worth of software for $70 is a pretty compelling proposition. Assuming you’re not already using OpenOffice and NeoOffice, which are, you know, FREE.
Follow John on Twitter | Follow AllThingsD on Twitter
Comments
Or, you could be using OpenOffice, which is also free, and for most of us, does the job nicely, and without the service outage hiccups.
Posted by Gary Maxwell at July 2nd, 2008 at 2:12 pmDuly noted, Gary. I added OpenOffice and NeoOffice to the post.
Posted by John Paczkowski at July 2nd, 2008 at 4:23 pmMicrosoft already offers their Office product ~ $125 for 3 installations for “students”. Why pay $70/yr for an inferior product?
Posted by Alex Tolley at July 3rd, 2008 at 8:07 am