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Microsoft kills Equipt

by on19 November 2008

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Office subscription experiment over

It seems Microsoft figured out that OneCare with the subscription version of Office was not such a hit after all; and the company will move quickly to discontinue the bundle which was known as Equipt and was sold on the shelves at Circuit City.

The concept was to sell the Microsoft OneCare protection product along with a subscription to Office. It was viewed as an up sell by Microsoft who thought that annual anti-virus renewal was the perfect timing to get customer to subscribe to the latest version of Microsoft Office.

Those who took advantage of the Equipt program will receive a free copy of Microsoft Office for their trouble, as Microsoft will be going another direction with their antivirus and malware product. The move in the end turns out not to be so bad for the consumer, as Microsoft will even give you the copy of Office if you call up and request a pro-prated refund.

We don’t look for Microsoft to totally abandon their quest to move forward with the subscription model, but to instead refocus their efforts in a new direction, which we guess will focus on Web-based products as well as software services that they can bundle Office with. We also expect that they will continue to offer subscription versions of Office in countries where it makes sense.

As for Windows Live OneCare, Microsoft will be moving this to a new offering which is slated to arrive in the second half of 2009. The yet unnamed product, which is known as code-name “Morro,” will be a free security suite that should really help get more users covered, as many PCs today continue to be used without proper antivirus software.

Last modified on 19 November 2008
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