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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

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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.

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  • 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.
  • Duly noted, Gary. I added OpenOffice and NeoOffice to the post.
  • Alex Tolley
    Microsoft already offers their Office product ~ $125 for 3 installations for "students". Why pay $70/yr for an inferior product?
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About John

John Paczkowski has been poking fun at the tech industry and the personalities that drive it since 1997. From 1999 to 2007, he wrote the award-winning tech news Web log Good Morning Silicon Valley for the San Jose Mercury News, Silicon Valley's daily newspaper. Read more »

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