A lot of people are up in arms about Microsoft's decision to charge for new Office 2007 beta downloads. Existing beta testers can download the upcoming refresh for free; this is simply for new users.
Since the end of May, Beta 2 has been downloaded more than 3 million times...That's 500 percent more than what was expected," the representative said. "The fee helps offset the cost of downloading from the servers."
Marc suggests (ever so slightly) that maybe it's just a ruse to get more people to download it. Others have questioned why, if bandwidth cost was the real driver behind this decision, Microsoft didn't turn to BitTorrent or other P2P solutions. (RedSwoosh, who I wrote about last month, did in fact swoosh the link - but the C&D is inevitable).
Personally, I agree with Leo's assessment in the latest TWiT podcast: this isn't about bandwidth, this is about controlling the beta. That is, they don't want to make the beta private or otherwise limit participation, but they do want to, as Leo put it, "keep the riff-raff" out. The fee is nominal and irrelevant - but the simple act of having to produce a credit card is relevant.