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<blank stare=""> Been there; done that.
How many solutions will I need to develop to justify $5000 overhead? Here, I spent 4 hours taking that data and putting it in a spreadsheet. That'll be $6000.
Joel Palmer
Data Integration Engineer
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Unf. Consultants don't correctly bill for their time in Software making a "flux" of "cheap" candidates that don't understand basic economics. I don't actively maintain an MSDN (although I was graced with one this year and last) but I do build the cost of software and training into my hourly rate.
Perhaps you can consider a license burden fee of $500 for any client that uses any version but the latest of Office. Cost of doing business.
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I find there is a certain level of trepidation on the part of consultants to actually charge, sure they want to put in # per hour but never seem to want to add in the ancillary costs that they have just doing business. I know I was like that. Eventually when you go broke running a negative cash flow you do wake up though.
Never underestimate the power of human stupidity
RAH
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It's been around that price for as long as I can remember. I think there might've been a set of intermediate versions around $2.5/3k at one point each with a somewhat different set of Stuff Other than Visual Studio, but they got removed several VS versions ago because they made figuring out what version of VS you needed too complicated. Instead they collapsed it into 4 distinct tiers.
0) Express - Free; gets the job done as a basic coder but doesn't come with any quality of life benefits for developers.
1) Pro - The standard ordinary MS developer version has a fully functional VS and developer versions of the most commonly used MS server applications. Good enough for about 90% of people.
2) Premium - Adds a few more helpers to VS (but from what I've seen on MSDN I'd rather have Pro + R#er than Premium on its own); the main justification for why this one is so much more expensive is that it comes with developer versions of almost everything no matter how old or esoteric. Unless your employer has guzzled the MS koolaid you'll never need to use more than a small fraction of it though.
3) Ultimate - This version mostly exists to fleece employers who buy the best of everything no matter the cost; or Enterprise Developers (tm) fleeing the grips of irRational; for whom the handful of UML related odds and ends tossed in the bundle are actually likely to be useful and for whom $10k looks cheap.
If MS were to offer a single new version at ~$3k that combined VS premium and the right to pick and choose an arbitrary few of the complete server app and etcs collection in premium they'd probably see a bunch of sales for it. The reason it will probably never happen is that most of the sales would be from customers who bought premium for a single item on the laundry list going to the cheaper edition; not people at the pro level spending up. 
Did you ever see history portrayed as an old man with a wise brow and pulseless heart, waging all things in the balance of reason?
Is not rather the genius of history like an eternal, imploring maiden, full of fire, with a burning heart and flaming soul, humanly warm and humanly beautiful?
--Zachris Topelius
Training a telescope on one’s own belly button will only reveal lint. You like that? You go right on staring at it. I prefer looking at galaxies.
-- Sarah Hoyt
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Well, what you appear to be "missing" at this point in time, on this thread, is that OriginalGriff, Ennis Ray Lynch, Jr., and Richard MacCutchan have given you practical, immediately useful, advice, based on years of experience and hard-won knowledge, which you should listen to, very carefully.
“But I don't want to go among mad people,” Alice remarked.
“Oh, you can't help that,” said the Cat: “we're all mad here. I'm mad. You're mad.”
“How do you know I'm mad?” said Alice.
“You must be," said the Cat, or you wouldn't have come here.” Lewis Carroll
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Microsoft target consumers, for the MSDN Premium, are corporates and mid-size companies, not individual freelance developers. I am a consultant and I have been issued an MSDN Premium in every corporate I worked for...
Make it simple, as simple as possible, but not simpler.
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Joel,
I used to have a company-sponsored MSDN subscription which cost me something like £800 as a salary sacrifice and the company picked up the rest of the cost which at the time was something like £6000 here in the UK. It gave me 10 licence codes for each of just about all MS' products and they were perpetual licence codes which have served me well the last four years and still do. I also had 24hr support which was really worth having; it was nice to fire a vexing problem at MS and let them sit with it on a four hour response time. On one support call to do with a printer device driver we were developing they sent one of the R&D team from their UK head office to our office to see at first hand what we were trying to do. They punted it States-side and two days later we got a very detailed answer of the best way to solve the problem and they gave a sample project to prove the concept worked.
It cost a lot of money initially but I got to keep the licence codes when I left the company and we got complete satisfaction from MS. To some folks in the lounge that would seem at odds with how MS do things. For me, it was really good value for money, still is, and for once, I got more bang for my buck from MS than I dared to expect. 
Nothing I write though is in opposition to Bill Woodruff's comments.
If there is one thing more dangerous than getting between a bear and her cubs it's getting between my wife and her chocolate.
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1.
Have the customers provide the licenses for the particular versions they want.
You need this on Excel 97?
You have to provide me a license/copy of Excel 97.
The following will not work if you have to integrate with a live, running instance of Excel.
If you just need to generate files, they will work fine for batch or service based processing.
2.
Consider using old, but stable formats that have been supported on all Excel versions. SYLK, DIF, CSV, etc. Many of these formats would work with the Win 2.1 versions of Excel all of the way to the most current.
3.
OpenOffice + Java API will produce compatible documents and save you $5000. I doubt this would support back to 97, though.
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While I agree that MS has lost touch with its developers and has for quite some time IMO. I will say that they have made it pretty easy to get their products for free as a partner or ISV. So yes MS has alienated their developer base, I am working hard to get away from the MS stack, and yes the pricing is crazy but they have tried to create incentives like BizSpark.
Anyway just my 1.5 cents worth lost the rest.
JD
Thanks
JD
http://www.seitmc.com/seitmcWP
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I'm aware of a company that has > 10,000 MSDN licenses that last year downgraded everyone from Premium to Pro level subscriptions due to the cost of those licenses.
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It boils down to business philosophy.
Your point about the company depending on developers providing lots of apps is valid. Traditionally MS has been eager to encourage developers.
Recent management has been more interested in bottom line and paying out dividends.
When short term goals like revenue become more important than long term growth, this is what you get.
From a pure revenue perspective, there is a 'sweet spot' in the demand/price curve. Everyone knows that when price is low, sales go up. High prices yield fewer sales. Revenue is the product of sales and revenue; there is an ideal price at which the sales * price product is maximized. This price change may be an attempt to find that sweet spot.
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Unfortunately you're right, MSDN is insanely pricey these days, but you may want to look at Bizpark, it may be worth.
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This is like any other business (or should be). And if you treat it as such, then the cost will actually increase your profit.
Successful businesses charge a margin above their costs. Your costs have increased by $5000, so you increase the charge accordingly.
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I have a domain with them, and they spam me like no other company I do business with.
I must get 3 or 4 elephanting emails from them every elephanting day!
Does anyone else have any domains with Network Solutions?
(I know that legally it's not spam if there exists a business relationship, but still!)
The difficult we do right away...
...the impossible takes slightly longer.
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Just out of curiosity: What do they send you?
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Constant advertisements for their SEO service, their web design service and other things that I don't even know about because I don't open the emails!
The difficult we do right away...
...the impossible takes slightly longer.
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And there is no option like "Don't send me news about xyz"? 
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To be honest, I never looked. But now that you mention it, I do see a link for unsubscribing from marketing emails.
The difficult we do right away...
...the impossible takes slightly longer.
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Now that link only needs to work 
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Failing that, if you're giving them money, I'd say do it the old fashioned way and pick up the phone and call them. If you represent any value to them, I'm sure something will be done...time you spend on the phone with their sales reps to complain is time they don't get to spend with other customers.
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I'm so glad I wasn't drinking anything when I read that reply.
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Oh, I know !
Fortunately my domain doesn't get nearly enough traffic to qualify for being auto-enrolled.
The difficult we do right away...
...the impossible takes slightly longer.
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i have one, i'm waiting for it to expire so i can move it
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