Today, you can get Microsoft Word 2010 — and just Microsoft Word 2010 — for $120 on Amazon.com. It’s not a great deal. For the same price, you can buy Office Home and Student. However, if you are a stickler for reading and following End User License Agreements to the the letter or the agreement, and you use Word (and just Word) for business or commercial use, this is the version you’d buy. If this is strange, you got to realize this is how Microsoft soaks up from companies their economic surplus. It is near impossible for anybody to buy massive quantities of Home and Student,  whereas enterprises get heavy discounts for buying huge site licenses with things like imaging and license management features. (Universities tend to also buy through site-licenses.) That would still cost them thousands of dollars, but it is still cheaper than retail and they don’t fear a BSA audit for trying to subvert EULA  by buying cheap home edition.  Sadly, for the one-man writing business, you’re stuck with the $120 Word-only edition.

Why did I spend the above paragraph explaining poorly how people buy MS Word or MS Office? Because MG Siegler has praised Amit Runchal at TechCrunch who spent 12 paragraphs telling everyone how Microsoft is doomed because their software is too expensive because people only want Word and Microsoft does not sell just Word. He wrote this without appearing to realize that Microsoft does sell just Word. Or understanding how Microsoft sells Office in general. How Microsoft might have to deal with pricing tablet applications that began from an accurate premise would have been a far more interesting piece to read. Of course, MG Siegler wouldn’t be able to recognise such an article, so he serves you more helpings of “Microsoft is going to die,” empty calories they may be.