Company Store
ActiveWin has up some pictures of the Microsoft company store. One of the nice benefits of working at Microsoft is being able to buy software at a nice discount.
I was so in awe of the prices when I first went that I bought all this stuff I never use. I think I still have an unopened mouse somewhere in the back of my closet at home.
It's a common Microsoft myth that employees get the software all for free though.
Comments
Anonymous
April 27, 2004
Its quite a tradition in some places to just "borrow" Software from the workplace and use it on your home computer. (I found it to be especially true in France, but a lot less in the US).
It would be interresting to know if this kind of practice is controlled at MS.
I could'nt see the price of the software on the photos, but I guess it must something less than 25% of the store price otherwise being a MS employee could actually be a disadvantage because you would feel guilty to make an illegal copy of your own products.Anonymous
April 27, 2004
"I found it to be especially true in France, but a lot less in the US."
Could it be that the French tend to think that the price of software is heavily inflated, 95% ROI, as exemplified by the price of an OS like Windows XP in China, ten bucks or so. In France, in retail, it's 290 euros.
What kind of conclusion would someone with common sense draw from that?Anonymous
April 29, 2004
The conclusion you can draw is that when you buy software, you pay for the value of the product and not the cost. Value can change depending on many conditions including geography. (Btw Is it MS selling WinXP in china for 10buck, or some pirates...).
But actually I dont think the price is the matter if windows XP was 10Euros in France, people would still copy it instead of buying it. People are just not use to pay for software. When I was a kid in France, I never bought a game for my computer always copied from somebody else. And dont remember my father buying any software, everything was copied form the workplace. I think the only time we bough some software was to install on my Sister new laptop that she use for her own business.Anonymous
June 20, 2004
Microsoft wouldn't be able to offer the software for free otherwise people would be taking it and giving it out to family and friends at the least, and it could have a noticable impact.
Makes sense to have a kind of staff discount. If you work at a supermarket, would you expect all your food to be free or a reasonable staff discount depending on product?Anonymous
April 08, 2008
PingBack from http://drugsmoviesblog.info/waynes-microsoft-blog-company-store/Anonymous
May 28, 2009
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June 15, 2009
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