Microsoft To Charge For Office 2007 Beta Downloads!

When one thinks of beta software, he usually thinks of a product that is given to the public for free with the intentions of having a wide variety of users test it and provide a substantial amount of feedback. Rarely, if ever, do we think of beta software as having a price tag. When was the last time you checked to see how much a piece of beta software cost? Probably not recently. Well, Microsoft is about to change all of that starting next Wednesday.

According to ZDNet, Microsoft will begin charging US$1.50 per download for Microsoft Office 2007 Beta 2. For most people, that's a $1.50 more than what beta software is expected to cost. So why does Microsoft feel that it needs to charge for a beta? A company spokeswoman lays it out for us.
Since the end of May, Beta 2 has been downloaded more than 3 million times...That's 500 percent more than what was expected. The fee helps offset the cost of downloading from the servers.

Full Story: http://arstechnica.com/journals/microsoft.ars/2006/7/28/4808