On Mar 6, 2009, at 11:22 AM, MB Software Solutions General Account

wrote:

> On a serious note though, if MonkeyBoy Ballmer called you and said

> "Paul,

> you open-source, bleeding liberal, socialistic SOB (...well, maybe he

> wouldn't say that part), what do you suggest we do in our sales

> strategies? Paul, we can't just give it away...how would we make our

> money?"

Provide true value to customers, where people *want* to buy your

products. The reason Word and Excel became such important products is

that they made life easier for their users, and that was worth paying

money for.

How does Vista or XP or Win7 make your life easier than the previous

version? How about the latest Office versus the previous Office? Is it

worth the cost? Or do you feel compelled to pay for the upgrade

because the old version will be rendered incompatible or insecure?

-- Ed Leafe