I think people pay for not having to go through the hassle of installing yet another piece of software with all the pitfalls such a task holds for non-techies.

If I'm an attorney making about $100/hour (net), and it takes me two hours to install and get comfy with an unfamiliar product, that's $200, and there will still be that nagging feeling that I will not be 100% compatible with my colleagues' e-mail attachments (or they with mine). For another $200 (assuming I'm not getting it pre-installed with my brand new laptop), I get peace of mind.

No, wait, I just checked Dell's web site. For $275 you get Office Small Business edition PLUS Acrobat 8. So this attorney's not paying an extra $200, but just $75, and he gets Acrobat as well! I'd take that deal in a second.

If you're doing this in your spare time and the two hours only cost you a couple of missed episodes of The Sopranos, then yes, you'd be saving $200 or more by going the Openoffice.org route.

Me? I used Office 95 until the year 2000, when I upgraded to 97, and then settled on Office 2000 about 4 years ago. I had to upgrade because I'm a software developer and some projects required me to. Otherwise, I'd still be on 95. After all, these amazing machines that can run circles around the computing power that put a man on the moon are nothing but trully glorified typewriters.

When Office 97 came out, if I remember correctly, I drilled the Microsoft staff at PC Expo asking them for compelling reasons to recommend that my clients spend yet more money on a product they're happy with. They couldn't come up with anything other than "Collaboration", which was the big thing back then. "Nah", I said, "I don't think a bunch of secretaries and managers have any use for another 10 people participating in their resume-writing exercises, nor do they have ANY use for Web-publishing their internal memos and letters to customers and vendors"

During this time I did give Office XP and 2003 a shot and decided that there's nothing in those products that I can't live without. Besides, do you have any idea how quickly Word or Excel 2000 comes up and responds on a Pentium 4 2GHz w/HT (not to mention even newer machines)? It's a real pleasure to use.

Needless to say, I might consider giving OpenOffice a shot, but mostly out of curiosity, and as far as the current incarnations of Office, I'll just pass.