> I've yet to meet anybody who thinks MS's prices are reasonable. (OTOH, 
> everybody wants things to be cheaper, so I guess that's not saying a lot.)

Yeh, a significant proportion of the population use price as the only 
criteria when buying anything.  They will go into a shop and buy the 
cheapest vacuum cleaner, the cheapest washing machine, then go and buy the 
cheapest car insurance, the cheapest food at the supermarket, etc.  Trying 
to make a quality service or product for these people is just a waste of 
time, they won't spend the money...

> M$ Office 2007, full package, £350.

...but some people do (usually if they are a company) and so companies need 
to take advantage of this.  Notice how the "home" version of Office 2007 is 
60 pounds but the full version is 350 like you said.  What's the difference? 
The 6x price increase certainly doesn't seem to be justified, but I suspect 
that way it makes the most money for MS overall.

> Pretty close, considering I guessed the number off the top of my head. I 
> see Vista is currently selling for £180 or so.

Again, people who actually pay for this themselves have a much cheaper 
option, whereas people who don't care so much about money get stung for a 
way more expensive option.  It happens everywhere, not just in software.

> If you think that's "cheap", then good for you.

It seems completely in-line with other software available, which I assume 
has kind of settled down to the market price.

> OK, that's pretty lame. I'd ask why you don't go use a better package 
> instead, but I suspect the answer is going to be some combination of
>
> - There aren't any better products to choose from.

More specifically, the good things about the package we have far outweighs 
the fact that it crashes sometimes.  And the other packages probably crash 
sometimes too :-)

> - Our clients use this product and we need to be compatible.

Yes.

> - We've bought it now so we can't get our money back anyway.

True, but we still have to pay around 3K a year for maintenance.

> If I paid that amount of money for something that didn't work right, I'd 
> be *pissed*! o_O

I don't think they expect individuals to buy their software...

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