You can find other more reasonable alternatives. Most of which are free or at the very least very low cost.

One very reasonably priced alternative to Microsoft Office is Microsoft's own Works. This is basically a stripped down version of the more robust Microsoft Office. However, Works usually does about almost everything the typical office user might need, and in most cases would be perfectly sufficient. What Microsoft does with Works is usually use an older version of it's products and put in Works, so unless you need the newest whizbang features, you'll most likely find the product to be just what you need.

One software suite that is sweeping the corporate world is Open Office. A truly revolutionary idea, Open Office has been created by developers as Open Source software. Which means that the programming is done by independent programmers around the world rather than a central corporation like Microsoft.

The best part of Open Office is the price, completely free. It's a great choice for most users, and remains very compatible with the industry standard Microsoft Office products. There are free alternatives to Excel, Powerpoint, Word and even Access which Microsoft Works doesn't use. The files it creates are compatible with other Microsoft Office programs. Which means that you'll be able to send the files to other people and they'll be able to open them normally. This is very important in this day and age of information interchange.

One way of dealing with documents that is gaining a lot of steam is Google Documents. By simply creating a Google account, you can get free access to Google Documents, and immediately start creating word and excel documents very similar to how Microsoft Office works.

Many users like the fact that while using Google Documents all of your documents are web based, which means that you're protected from data loss on your personal computer. After losing years of work in 10 seconds when a hard drive went bad, I feel more comfortable that Google with it's backups is a lot more likely to be able to preserve my documents.

Also with Google documents it's very easy to share and co-edit the same documents right online. We use Google documents almost exclusively in our office, and love how easy it is to collaborate on projects together.

You can create compatible documents using multiple alternative sources. Even though Microsoft Office is the leader, it doesn't mean you have to spend all that money to get your office productivity done.