[citation][nom]anonymousme[/nom]Anybody else find it humorous that Microsoft provides a file Office is necessary to open to see which version of Office you might need?[/citation]
I wish they would just offer "Microsoft Office 2010" for $100 or something more reasonable. I mean, why do we need the student, professional, etc versions. I hate tiered pricing. Remember when Office 97 was just Office 97 and it wasn't that expensive?
If OpenOffice would put some money behind developement to make it faster and more user friendly, then I believe more companies would get tired of being raped by MS and switch.
The Office Professional Academic version is only for students, as in only in College bookstores, and will be $99 for the College to purchase. Normally an institution will cover some the cost of Office for the first licence. Beyond that and you might not even be able to buy another copy of the Academic version, but it would be much closer to that $40 you are talking about. $99 for EVERYTHING in Office is a steal in the real world though.
When you consider all features of office, it is not expensive for such a product. However 99% of people use less then 10% of all features and for them it really is too expensive.