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But MS Works is actually a pretty good little suite for the price.

When I last used MS Works (several years ago), it was absolutely terrible. I loathed it. And I don't do much advanced word processing, so it should have fallen right up my alley (for just about everything I need, AbiWord works fine). Have they improved it in the last few years?

It's not as user-centric as it should be. But I thought that the 2005 version was good for the kids to do homework, granny to do her word processing, able to make sports stat charts, generate easy budget worksheets.

No, not great software. But not everyone is a computer scientist. A lot of people can't handle and don't need MS Office. Most people, actually. Quite often I see people using MS Word that seem to think it's a typewriter (no concept of tabs, justification, text-flow around images or callouts, have no idea of the drawing annotation tools). And homework and granny's Christmas letter seldom need a lot of fancy work. More often, they're more personal and interesting if they aren't all dressed up in with some stock clipart package.

I am a little biased. I like software that lets the user focus on content, not frills. And not everyone is ready for the advanced interaction of Clippy.