[CarRamrod]

You are completely right. Software is extremely overpriced. I built my computer last Spring and had the choice of whether to buy Vista Home Premium or XP Professional. I looked at the prices and the difference between the two was only about $50 or so. Now my thinking was, I might was well go with Vista because if I'm gaming I will need it in the future for better games, and it will eventually be what everyone uses like XP is the OS now. It was ridiculous to see them both hovering around $200(Vista was around $230 I think) which is extremely expensive considering the OS's are very similar with improvements each time. I would have pirated XP but doing that is hit-or-miss since some of the downloads don't work fully and such. This is something most people don't see since they don't build their computers, but buy them with the OS preloaded onto it. Now, I could have bought the OEM version for around $100 or less but it only installs once so if I were to reformat I would be screwed. I'm also glad my brother was in graduate school at Pitt because they provided him with Office 2007 which I installed onto my PC. Office is pretty expensive as well so I'm glad I didn't have to pay for it. These are just examples of Micro$hit being a monopoly but there are many different softwares around that are extremely expensive as well. Hell, it's dumb to see video games going up to $60(except for Wii). I mean there is no reason for them to suddenly rise $10. You can't argue it's because of the great graphics and such because computer games are better looking and everything but still cost around $40-$50. I really hate inflation, but that's mostly gas. >_<