Microsoft already does some annoying things involving money with beta testers. For one, they 1099 you for the software they “pay” you for your time to drive up there and beta test their products on site. Didn’t know that? Now you do. Naturally they write off the software they pay beta testers in, so to be in compliance with the IRS they need to 1099 the beta testers. This only applies to those beta testers who receive more than $600 USD worth of software in a calendar year which is easy to do if you take programs like Office for your payment. It doesn’t seem very sensible for a beta tester to spend 2-4+ hours beta testing and take the latest Xbox 360 game ($50-60USD) as payment for the time, although I’ve seen several who do.

Now enter the idea that Microsoft is now going to charge $1.50 for each Office beta downloads. Warner is being nicer than I will be about the plan:

Now, I’m sure there are valid issues for this. As I recall Microsoft claims the demand almost brought down the Internet when they publicly released the Beta of both Vista and Office 2007(still resisting.) But this just seems silly to me. I wonder if we have to pass through the WGA barriers before they will aceept our $1.50.

No, I won’t be paying $1.50 to download and then offer free helpful information to Microsoft. They should be paying me $1.50 (at least) to download and give them advice/feedback. I know their bandwidth charges are high, boo hoo, that’s a cost of doing business. Maybe they should start their own eBay auctions for special beta invites to their program?

As a matter of personal protest to this move, I just uninstalled their smiley feedback system. They probably won’t care. I’ll just be another shrill voice on a blog. Nevermind the fact our company spends thousands on their software every year, a practice which I’m becoming less and less excited about doing.

From a negative publicity standpoint, this is a brilliant move. Maybe that’s what it’s really about. They want to have a bunch of people talk about how stupid this is so they can come out and say they listened to the wisdom of the crowd and won’t be charging. If so, they got me.

For every right thing Microsoft does, they seem to do at least two or three things that are really dumb. Log this is under the dumb column.

• Send a smile or frown during Office 2007 testing
• Download Microsoft Office 2007 beta
• Microsoft releases Office 2003, not available to playtesters as comp
• Microsoft Windows AntiSpyware (Beta)
• I won’t be buying into Windows Live OneCare, will you?
• There beta testers last chance for lifetime membership deal