It's been a while since I priced MS Office (Pro), but that was the price I last saw. If it has come down, great!
Office Pro at retail does cost almost $400 but that's a lot more than a Word Processor. As I've shown, there are plenty of price points in the Microsoft Office line up that offer the consumer the best value.
Get Microsoft programs that your whole family can use, including Works, Encarta Encyclopedia, Picture It! Premium, Streets and Trips, and Money
Works--OOo I can use and so does my whole family -- That's good no?
Encarta--Are you serious? You've never heard of the Internet for fact research? --Maybe you don't want your kids on the internet when looking up stuff for school
Picture It!--Most any graphics program works just fine. None of us (my family) are professional photographers anyway. --Picture It! is pretty easy to use an critically acclaimed. It can help those non-professional photographers look like one!
Streets and Trips--Rand McNally does the same thing --What if you don't have a fancy car with a built in GPS guide but do have a laptop with Streets and Trips.
Money--Gnucash is perfect for my small business and family finances. -- I prefer something with better support than a newsgroup.
MS offers me nothing that I can't get somewhere else--usually better, cheaper, and more reliable.
Open Source offers no innovation but merely copies of successful software. And like outsourcing, will drive down the value of the work of software professionals that soon they will not exist in the US.
Keep telling that to yourself as every internet packet you send goes through a TCP/IP stack based on open source code that Microsoft uses under the BSD license.