Everyone apart from the developers thinks that micro software prices are outrageous, and US users are taking full advantage of the vicious price war that has broken out between the majors as they scramble for market share: according to the Wall Street Journal, Merisel Inc offers the $259 Professional Write Plus at $100 when you trade in most rival word processors; Lotus Developement Corp offers $500 Ami Professional for $130 in exchange for any MS-DOS word processor; the same price differential is offered by Borland International Inc on Quattro Pro to people trading in 1-2-3, Excel or Symphony; the same company will give you the $800 Paradox for $175 if you trade in dBase, FoxBase, Rbase or DataEase; Microsoft Corp is making a direct mail offer of $500 Excel and Word for Windows at $130 apiece to users of any spreadsheet or word processor respectively; and Lotus is also offering $500 Freelance at $100 in exchange for any presentation graphics program; software is heavily discounted in the US, and users generally pay $250 to $300 for a program that has a $500 list price.
