I can understand why people like to pirate Microsoft software – the price! Their software is extortionately priced… for a copy of Windows XP Professional and Office 2003 Professional you’re looking at around £620. That’s way too much for most people, including me!

So what I do is sign up for the Microsoft Partner Action Pack. It costs around £200 + VAT per year, and you get over £16,000 worth of Microsoft software. You may not ever use most of the pack, but you do get XP Pro and Office 2003 Pro included, and you can see the saving!

£234 a year is nothing compared to what you would be paying if you bought everything separately.

I got my quarterly update today, which included the latest XP Pro with SP2, Office 2003 Small Business Edition, ISA Server 2004, SBS 2003 Premium Edition (on 3 discs instead of 5, I’m not sure how they’ve managed that), and Windows XP Media Centre Edition 2005!

The full contents can be found here.

Not to sign up for a subscription truely is madness.