Get a free office suite from SoftMaker AND they donate money for each download

[CoolCat26]

Untill December 24 SoftMaker runs a charity campaign:

They give away a complete office suite including word processor, spreadsheet, and presentation-graphics program at no charge.

Good enough. But even better: for each free download they donate 10 Euro cents to charity projects.

Everyone can monitor how much downloads created how much money and where it flows,

check it out and share this information, I think it's a great thing:

www.loadandhelp.com

[tomos]

They've donated €2,000 so far.
There's been over 30,000 downloads so far (since December 12th I think) so they'll be having to donate a lot more by Christmas eve.

[Edvard]

Downloaded. Thanks for the heads up! 

[Tinman57]

  So how is the company making profit from this, is it ad based?

[TaoPhoenix]

 So how is the company making profit from this, is it ad based?

If I were a Business guy, it's like viral advertising. Companies developing software should have a couple of bucks in the bank, not trying to monetize every last click from Day 3. This is gonna sound harsh but "donating 3,500 pounds" is peanuts for a company, it's like 6 weeks of fast food job pay. What they gain instead is a "use case" for 10 cents a piece where ordinary ad campaigns might run them thousands of dollars for a particular ad campaign in the old style.

Edit:
In the download process they ask for Name (of course I am "User"), Country, and an email address where they can "From time to time, we will send you our newsletter that keeps you up-to-date on what's happening at SoftMaker. This newsletter is free of charge, and you may unsubscribe at any time.". So it's that age old "Free As In Beer" by trading a newsletter recipient for a one time 10 penny donation. Standard business tradeoff.

Edit2: Now when you run it, it wants a name, email address, and serial number. On a second screen it tries to ask for your address and phone number and more. You can bypass that. Then for every startup it seems to show an ugly "sidebar" that I can't figure out how to permanently turn off. It's basically an ad for itself. Summary - more typical tricks behind the "yay free" hype that starts threads. I'm going back to LibreOffice.

[TaoPhoenix]

I am into truck and car dealing business and i get to know about the the software revise sales tax,One of my friends suggested this turbotax coupon ,and i found it quite reliable but i want some suggestion regarding this software,Is there any other software's in the market i can use which needs to be user friendly too.?

Really?! Off topic spam much?

[4wd]

On a second screen it tries to ask for your address and phone number and more.

So it can pre-fill templates with either your personal or business info - stops asking after the second run, (here anyway).

So how is the company making profit from this, is it ad based?

Depends what you mean by ad-based - the sidebar Tao is complaining about shows tips/tricks and sometimes describes how it would be done/easier in the commercial version but it doesn't download anything from the net to do it - it's all in files installed at the same time as the program.
If you let it, it will update the files when new versions become available but other than that there's no ads.

If you don't like the commercial plugging go to C:\Program Files (x86)\SoftMaker FreeOffice\inst\banners and delete the three directories.  Do the same at %APPDATA%\SoftMaker\banners.

Or edit the PNG files to remove the references to the commercial offering to retain the tips.

Or substitute your own PNG files if you want more tips/porn/whatever.

[tomos]

On a second screen it tries to ask for your address and phone number and more.

Your details are saved locally - then when you open a template (e.g. letter), your details will be automatically filled in. I love that myself
There's also a database where you can fill in details of other people you regularly write to - havent used that one much.

I'd highly recommend it, but this one does have the disadvantage of not being able to open the more recent MS office formats.

Over the years I've gotten various free versions and a couple of paid ones too - mostly via Ashampoo & then upgrade to the Softmaker version. I get very little mail - update notifications and occasional upgrade offers for older versions.

[Tinman57]

Really?! Off topic spam much?

hehehe.  Looks like ol' lukebrown got his spam message blown away.  Nothing I love more than smokin' spam. 

[cmpm]

I think the profit is from many popular sites mentioning SoftMaker's office suite.
Their free 2008 office suite was a great deal too.
Replaced now with SoftMaker Free Office.

[tomos]

I am into truck and car dealing business and i get to know about the the software revise sales tax,One of my friends suggested this LINK REMOVED ,and i found it quite reliable but i want some suggestion regarding this software,Is there any other software's in the market i can use which needs to be user friendly too.?

Really?! Off topic spam much?

now you're the one spamming Tao
(maybe you'd remove the link :up)