Bob Lewis
Columnist

A DST ditty

analysis
Mar 10, 20071 min

With the Daylight Savings Time switch about to happen, you might find this piece by Mary Jo Foley on ZDNet, titled, "Microsoft to charge for Daylight Saving hotfixes for older products," amusing.Microsoft, if you don't know, moves products from Mainstream Support to Extended Support as they age and become obsolete. Fair enough: Supporting semi-obsolete products is costly.But because of the importance of the DST

With the Daylight Savings Time switch about to happen, you might find this piece by Mary Jo Foley on ZDNet, titled, “Microsoft to charge for Daylight Saving hotfixes for older products,” amusing. Microsoft, if you don’t know, moves products from Mainstream Support to Extended Support as they age and become obsolete. Fair enough: Supporting semi-obsolete products is costly. But because of the importance of the DST issue, Microsoft is graciously making its daylight savings time fixes for products in Extended Support available for only $4,000 instead of the original price of $40,000, and will refund the difference to those who purchased the fixes at the original price. Well done, with one minor glitch: Microsoft’s representative explained that the $4,000 is being charged “just to cover costs.” Which brings up the question, Your original plan was to sell at a 1,000% margin?!?!? Thanks to Mark Bereit for bringing this article to my attention. – Bob