3.1a owner: must I pay for 2007 Groove

[Leo Plugge]

Hi,

Ever since Groove was sold to MS things seem te be unclear.
I'm a long time Groove user (back in 2000) . I have a 3.1a copy.
My questions:

1. Is Groove 2007 available now, or is it still in Beta?
2. If available, what is the pricing for (standalone) 3.1a owners?
And: Where can I find the information? I've never seen such a mess website
as the 2007 Office pages!

Thank you guys/girls for any help on this.

-Leo-

 

[Leo Plugge]

BTW: I've seen the demo download, but I don't want a demo. I want a stable
version that I can call myself owner of.

 

[Mark Smith]

Leo -

The pricing info is here:
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/suites/FX101754511033.aspx

As you can see, Microsoft want $229, with no upgrade pricing on offer. The
best deal seems to be Office Groove Live at $79 per year. I have a worry that
this will only be available on a three year contract though.

As a long-time Groove user and advocate, I wish I had better news. Perhaps
someone from Microsoft can shed some further light on the matter.

 

[Leo Plugge]

Thanks Mark,

This really is disappointing: "Upgrade not applicable", considering there's
a large installed base with 3.1 users. And where to find better advocates to
use Groove?

Most disturbing: Groove 2007 is available only with the 'Ultimate' and
'Enterprise' edition!
They don't seem to understand that Groove is a low entry level collaboration
suite that is suitable for students, ad hoc workgroups, small businesses, etc.

It's time for an open source alternative! Maybe one from the OpenOffice
people?
-Leo-

 

[Mark Smith]

Most disturbing: Groove 2007 is available only with the 'Ultimate' and

'Enterprise' edition!

You can definitely buy Groove on its own. Amazon sell it for $209. Amazon in
the UK sell it for an amazing £194 (about $370-$380).

They don't seem to understand that Groove is a low entry level collaboration
suite that is suitable for students, ad hoc workgroups, small businesses, etc.

Truth be told, those people stayed away, sadly. Groove refocussed its
efforts on big companies about the time that Groove 3 was released.


--
Regards
Mark Smith
http://www.infopatterns.com



:

 

[Rajesh Akkineni]

It's time for an open source alternative! Maybe one from the OpenOffice
people?
-Leo-

Even though not an open source project, We are working on such an
alternative called "Collaber" (google for it for more information).
Collaber will be a platform indipendent solution so it works on Linux and
Mac too. It will have all the tools available in groove. Collaber SDK can
be used to build custom tools.

We are willing to make it Open Source if OpenOffice people are ready to
ship it with their product. So I think we need to go long way for that.

But you need to wait another 2 or 3 months for Collaber to be ready to be
compared with Groove.

Thanks
Rajesh Akkineni