Yes, but, no, but...

Things like employee purchase programmes and educational/home discounts do bring MS Office within easy reach of Joe Bloggs. Oh, sure, most people in the UK who buy the home edition can probably afford the full price edition but it looks wank from the perspective of MS Office costing more than a machine that can run it. £179 for a brand new laptop. Damn sight less for a second XP capable machine.

With employee purchase schemes, Microsoft are essentially givng MS Office away. And it makes them money in that people using stuff at home means that they are learning the product outside of work, which leads to a higher level of proficiency. Which reduces training costs for the organisation. Which makes switching to a different office suite look more and more expensive. All that migration training and the time that it will take people to get up to speed, etc... Also, imagine the grumbles and ill-feeling from people if you do the change over.

By extension, Microsoft could give away MS Office for non-commercial use and probably still make lots of money, it not more. It would make MS Office even more of a de-facto standard than it now is. Free MS Office for schools and kids. When they hit the workplace - you either go with that or spend money on cross-training.

In the past, I've paid up for full versions of MS Office for home use. I've used it to upskill myself. I really hate to see that advantage I had eroded. But I've moved on terms of what I do. I don't do VBA for Excel anymore. I want to play with SQL Server, but the cost! Especially considering the necessary server license. And I can't make head nor tail of the licensing costs. It's enough to make me want to slink over to PirateBay. Which I won't.

Sod it. I'll make work cough up for a MSDN thing for me. "But you're not a developer" they'll say. Yes, but, I do a lot learning in my own time and actually I can and do code. And I look after my 2p x quad core Linux box with MySQL on it perfectly well.

Definitely a case of one tit bigger than the other if you view non-commercial usage driving commercial purchase. SQL Server Express? My arse. Ditto with Visual Studio.

Mine's the one with the gurning face of David Walliams on it.