5 thoughts on “The Ultimate Steal

  1. Looks like MSFT means college/university students.

    Do I sniff the eventually inescapable workings of microeconomics? Is OpenOffice now good enough and widely enough used that Microsoft has realized that they could lose the starving student market unless they price Office at only a few dozen times rather than a few hundred times the marginal cost of an SKU? Have Office 2007’s sales at already hugely reduced academic prices been so far behind projections that they’re now forced to sell Office much closer to it’s actual VALUE?

    What a shock!

  2. Typical example of non US-residents subsidizing the US: they pay higher nominal prices and their currency is stronger. Go OpenOffice!

  3. fzz – Since when does marginal-cost-to-produce have any bearing on the prices of products? (1) Product pricing is an art, in which companies gauge the consumer’s valuation of a product, and set prices to maximize revenue. (2) Development of a product like Office takes many man-years, which will never be recovered by charging marginal cost to produce: a few CDs cost next to nothing, and providing downloads only is even cheaper.

    Automobiles have a much higher marginal cost, but also substantial engineering and design costs. Still, you see pricing which is not representative of the marginal costs. The prices of low-end cars are routinely set lower than marginal, while manufacturers and dealers strive to get shoppers to buy up, adding expensive options at the same time.

    brv – Good luck with that OpenOffice stuff. Hope it works for you. BTW, how do you install an add-in in OO?

  4. sorry for my reaction, it was emotional. Having paid more than €250 as an ordinary home user, I really feel cheated – so I’m looking for decent alternatives.

    Jon, you’re right, but then trying to install the chart advisor in excel seems to be as daunting …


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