Expensive software available to students cheap at bookstore

By Caroline Limuti
Summer Forty-Niner

Cal State Long Beach students can rent software that costs hundreds of dollars such as, Office 2000 Pro and Visual Studio Pro, for less than $50 at the University Bookstore.

The programs are available to students and faculty because of a little-known agreement between Microsoft and Cal State University called the Microsoft Enterprise Agreement, a four-year, $8 million deal that provides software licenses for 30,000 faculty and staff and 180,000 students from the Cal State University system, according to the CSU-Microsoft Campus Enterprise Agreement Website.

"That is the importance of the agreement," said CSULB technology expert, "is that students can get a number of cheaply priced programs in the bookstore."

Students already can purchase programs from the University Bookstore at discounted prices such as $199.95 for Office 2000 Pro, significantly less than they would pay at retail computer stories which charge between $549.99 and $599.

But $199.95 is considerably more than the $25 administrative charge to rent Office 2000 Pro.  A $25 deposit also is needed to rent the program, but is refunded when the CD is returned.

Some of the disadvantages of renting the programs through the Bookstore, according to Cox, are that one does not get to keep the CD, does not get an installation manual and cannot receive help from Microsoft.

"Students can get modest help from the bookstore, " Cox said.

Another disadvantage of renting from the bookstore is if the computer the program is installed on crashes, the $20-$40 administrative charge has to be paid again to reinstall it.

"But Microsoft figures it is still cheaper (for the student). If your computer crashes eight times you break even," Gruber said.

When students graduate or leave the university, they can no longer rent programs from the University Bookstore but they can keep the programs on their computer until they want to upgrade or the computer crashes.

"Students have a better deal because faculty and staff are required to take it off their hard drive (when they leave the University), but they have to pay the fee" Cox said.

Faculty and staff members obtain their programs through Cox, and are only allowed to have the programs on their personal computers as long as they work for CSULB. They do not have to pay for the programs.

Programs available through the University Bookstore "include Microsoft Office Professional Edition, Microsoft Visual Studio Professional Edition, Microsoft FrontPage, Microsoft BackOffice Client Access, and both Microsoft Windows and Microsoft NT Workstation [upgrades]," according to the CSU-Microsoft Campus Enterprise Agreement Website.