Exactly if they lowered the costs to the consumer more people would buy it, I work as an IT, I have my own consulting firm and whenever I go to a site that is still using 9x I try to talk them into upgradeing to XP because it is more stable and secure, but most people do not want to pay $150+ per computer to upgrade, now if you could get it for $40 or $50 a lot more people would legally upgrade when the upgrades came out.
A lot of corporations like Microsoft blame high costs on the amount of priacy so they increase the price to make up for the illegal software, but in reality the high prices make priacy more worth it.
"I try to talk them into upgradeing to XP because it is more stable and secure,"
That is a matter of opinnion. Most of the virus that are comming out exploit XP and not 9X. Also I see XP machines crash all the time.