Quote:
Originally Posted by hrosvit
And you'll notice it's not a full version of Office.
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No, it's 'Home & Student' - but then what else would you expect on the 'consumer' version of Win8?
Quote:
Originally Posted by teh603
MS Office and Photoshop are nice (at least Office before '07 was nice) but who has $500 per piece of software?
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Fewer and fewer people; from Horace Dediu over at
Asymco:-
"So Microsoft faces a dilemma. Their business model of expensive software on cheap hardware is not sustainable. The future is nearly free software integrated into moderately priced hardware...
For Microsoft to maintain their profitability, they have to find a way of obtaining $80 of profit per device. Under the current structure, device makers will not pay $55 per Windows license per device and users will not spend $68 per Office bundle per tablet. Price competition with Android tablets which have no software licensing costs and with iPad which has very cheap software means that a $300 tablet with a $68 software bill will not be competitive or profitable.
However, if Microsoft can sell a $400 (on average) device bundled with its software, and is able to get 20% margins then Microsoft is back to its $80 profit per device sold. This, I believe, is a large part of the practical motivation behind the Surface product."
What Horace says is supposition, but let's assume that the above is accurate and the cash cows of Windows and Office are on the wane; how much do you think, in that context, MicroSoft are fretting about whether or not users can easily download a 2.3Gb software update?
Being charitable, I'd say not a lot. Realistically? Not at all.
Pete