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Microsoft readies 'Albany' subscription trial for consumers

By Mary Jo Foley | April 18, 2008, 6:02am PDT

Summary

Microsoft is set to start testing privately a consumer Software + Service bundle code-named “Albany,” an all-in-one bundle of Office Home and Student, Windows Live OneCare, Office Live Workspace and various Windows Live services.

Topics

Albany, Microsoft Corp., Microsoft Office, Microsoft Windows, Office Suites, Software, Operating Systems, Mary Jo Foley

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Mary-Jo Foley

Biography

Mary-Jo Foley

Mary-Jo Foley

Mary Jo Foley has covered the tech industry for 20 years for a variety of publications, including ZDNet, eWeek and Baseline. She has kept close tabs on Microsoft strategy, products and technologies for the past 10 years. In the late 1990s, she penned the award-winning "At The Evil Empire" column for ZDNet, and more recently the Microsoft Watch blog for Ziff Davis.

Got a tip? Send her an email with your rants, rumors, tips and tattles. Confidentiality guaranteed.

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Microsoft is set to start testing privately a consumer Software + Service bundle code-named “Albany,” an all-in-one bundle of Office Home and Student, Windows Live OneCare, Office Live Workspace and various Windows Live services.

Microsoft began signing up testers for Albany in March. Earlier this week, Microsoft sent a note to potential Albany testers, informing them that they would hear soon whether they’d been selected to participate and, once they had gotten the nod, to download the Albany bits from Microsoft’s private Connect site. On April 18, Microsoft acknowledged that the Albany beta was about to begin.

Microsoft plans to deliver the Albany test builds to “thousands” of beta participants and to deliver the final version of the product before the end of this calendar year, said Bryson Gordon, group product manager of Microsoft’s Office Consumer and Small Business Group.

Albany consists of 2007 version of Office Home and Student; Office Live Workspace, Microsoft’s collaboration-service complement to Office; Windows Live OneCare, Microsoft’s consumer security/backup service; and three Windows Live services — Live Mail, Live messenger and Photo Gallery. The bundle will be delivered via a single installer. When Microsoft releases new versions of any of these software or service components, Albany users will get the latest versions pushed to them automatically for as long as they are paying for the Albany subscription.

If and when Albany users cut their subscriptions, they won’t lose their data, said Gordon. They will be able to go out and buy a copy of Office and still access their documents and data, he said.

Gordon said Albany — which was known inside Microsoft as “ValueBox” — is aimed at consumers. It is not aimed at small business users “at this point,” Gordon said, hinting that Microsoft might have its sights set on a similar bundle for that segment.

Microsoft isn’t yet talking about Albany pricing. Gordon wouldn’t comment on Albany’s distribution model — whether Microsoft will attempt to get PC makers to include Albany links and/or components on new PCs. If Microsoft follows the same course it has taken with OneCare, it also might make a box version of Albany available in retail stores.

Microsoft is planning to continue to sell Office Home and Student and OneCare as standalone products/services. It also is continuing to offer its low-end productivity package, Microsoft Works (both paid and an ad-supported version). Microsoft still hasn’t offered any more information on if/when it also might offer a hosted version of Microsoft Works — an offering officials have been hinting was on the docket for the past couple of years.

Microsoft is not (at least publicly) positioning Albany as a competitor to Google Docs, Google’s Web-based productivity offering. But it sure seems to me that Microsoft is targeting the same group — consumers, students and possibly businesses, at some point — with Albany. I wonder when Google will add a security/backup service to Google Docs….

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Mary Jo has covered the tech industry for more than 25 years for a variety of publications and Web sites, and is a frequent guest on radio, TV and podcasts, speaking about all things Microsoft-related. She is the author of Microsoft 2.0: How Microsoft plans to stay relevant in the post-Gates era (John Wiley & Sons, 2008).

Disclosure

Mary-Jo Foley

Freelance journalist/blogger Mary Jo Foley has nothing to disclose. WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get). I do not own Microsoft stock or stock in any of its partners or competitors. I have no business ventures that are sponsored by/funded by Microsoft or any of its partners or competitors. I have not accepted any consulting funds from Microsoft, any of its partners or its competitors for any studies/projects.

Biography

Mary-Jo Foley

Mary Jo Foley has covered the tech industry for 20 years for a variety of publications, including ZDNet, eWeek and Baseline. She has kept close tabs on Microsoft strategy, products and technologies for the past 10 years. In the late 1990s, she penned the award-winning "At The Evil Empire" column for ZDNet, and more recently the Microsoft Watch blog for Ziff Davis.

Got a tip? Send her an email with your rants, rumors, tips and tattles. Confidentiality guaranteed.

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Talkback Most Recent of 74 Talkback(s)

  • Still, WAY too many features. Google is in a much better position here
    with a feature set appropriate for new connected, everything sharable world. All of those old baroque complicated features for formatting on 8.5x11 are looking more stupid every day.
    ZDNet Gravatar
    DonnieBoy
    04/18/2008 06:49 AM
  • Too many features in MS Office?
    MS Office's and Google Apps market share numbers say otherwise. It is only pundits who I hear complain about the many features of Office. Ordinary users are either satisfied or keep on requesting still more features for Office. E.g. I expect web collaboration and sharing will become staple features for most desktop applications in the future, and most vendors will have browser plugins that allow people to look at their apps' output files on the web, and do collaboration and sharing around them.

    It really does make sense to extend the web as a public publishing platform of many forms of data, while using desktop applications to richly create and manage these publications.
    ZDNet Gravatar
    P. Douglas
    04/18/2008 07:26 AM
  • No, current MS market share is due to its dominance in the PAST. We are on
    the cusp of a revolution, where all of those baroque, complicated features in MS Office that are not needed for the new paradigm will be like trying to sail with the anchor down. MS needs to cut the anchor loose (cut all of the baroque features), but, they can not bear the thought of giving up short term revenue in the billions . . . .
    ZDNet Gravatar
    DonnieBoy
    04/18/2008 07:34 AM
  • As I said before ...
    ... only pundits complain about too many features in desktop applications. Every time I dealt with customers in software development, they kept asking for new features. No one has ever asked me to remove features from an application. If someone does not like a feature, he is free to ignore it.
    ZDNet Gravatar
    P. Douglas
    04/18/2008 07:42 AM
  • Yes, if you talk to power users, they WILL ask for esoteric features that
    the masses do not care about. But, they should be using a publishing package, not word processing for the masses. The average user just want to type in the content, set fonts, add figures, etc. Google Docs does that a lot better than MS Office.

    And, you are not "free" to ignore all of those features. They result in a very complicated user interface, and you can accidentally activate those advanced features and not be able to turn them off. MS understands the problems of a million features that the average user does not want, and has made various attempts to hide advanced features, but in the end, they still cause productivity problems and extra learning.
    ZDNet Gravatar
    DonnieBoy
    04/18/2008 08:26 AM
  • The masses aren't stupid
    I definitely do not think you represent the masses. Unless you're saying most people are far too stupid to understand what a button does.

    Individuals all want different things. Some want advanced features, some don't. For those that do, the option's there. For those that don't, they can ignore it and not bother with it. But if needed, the option is still there.

    How hard is it not to activate a feature? Don't click it, and you don't mess with it. MS Works is probably the simpler solution to what you think the masses deserve.
    ZDNet Gravatar
    quikboy
    04/18/2008 07:19 PM
  • DB - here is a free clue...
    "Word" is not Office.
    ZDNet Gravatar
    Confused by religion
    04/19/2008 04:25 PM
  • Also consider
    that while the average user may use say 20% or 30% of the features, no two users are alike and they use a different sub set to make up their "favorite" 20% or 30%.

    Gee, my pickup has a "work light" to shine in the bed. I've never used it, but one day I may so I want it there. Just in case...
    ZDNet Gravatar
    No_Ax_to_Grind
    04/18/2008 09:23 AM
  • Let's see, that would be like paying $5,000 extra for a light you may never
    use. How about pay 5,000 less and put a flashlight in the glove compartment.

    But, back to word processing features. the masses would be very happy with a whole lot less features. They just need to enter the text context, set the fonts, add figures, etc. And, the power users would be much better off with a publishing / typesetting application, than a bloated generic word processing package.
    ZDNet Gravatar
    DonnieBoy
    04/18/2008 10:33 AM
  • $5 grand? what planet are you posting from
    Not only is your argument stupid, it flies in the face of reality and reality is users WANT MS Offcie.

    Whine, cry, rant, it doesn't change users minds.
    ZDNet Gravatar
    No_Ax_to_Grind
    04/18/2008 12:50 PM
  • On the same planet here you think we should pay a small fortune for those
    MS Office features theat are almost never used. It is the equivalent of paying an extra $5,000 for a pickup truck with lots of baroque features you seldom use. Just buy the flash light and get the cheap model (OpenOffice)
    ZDNet Gravatar
    DonnieBoy
    04/18/2008 04:31 PM
  • Yeah, that must be why Office 07 is
    out selling earlier versions. Even on the Mac.
    ZDNet Gravatar
    No_Ax_to_Grind
    04/18/2008 09:19 AM
  • Office 07 is for the old paradigm of office suites with baroque, esoteric
    complicated features for printing on 8.5x11 paper. MS IS trying to keep that model alive as long as possible. Given their monopoly in that category, they WILL be able to leverage that at least in the short term to keep the money rolling in.
    ZDNet Gravatar
    DonnieBoy
    04/18/2008 10:20 AM
  • In your opinion, but from what I have seen
    even with the reviews of Google, your in a very small minority. From my observations has a ways to go. MS is actually in a better position. They can take the office (still needs a lot of work, but as usual they will get there) and put it in a on-line environment and offer the best of both worlds. Google still has a long way to go to get there. OpenOffice has a much better shot.
    ZDNet Gravatar
    ItsTheBottomLine
    04/18/2008 10:33 AM
  • Very few people's work revolves around complicated formatting for 8.5x11
    paper. For those that are dedicated to formatting for 8.5x11 paper, they should look to a publishing / typesetting package.
    ZDNet Gravatar
    DonnieBoy
    04/18/2008 10:51 AM
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