Charity pricing is very attractive, and for Micro$oft products, very much so – Office Pro for US$67. But we can’t purchase full WinDoze licenses, only upgrade licenses based on the OEM installed OS – still, only US$71 right now to get an XP Pro license (which will allow us to install XP Pro, Win2K, WinNT or Win98 SE). Also, it seems to be fairly easy for any non-profit to get enrolled (minimun purchase to begin in the program is a quantity of 5 items on the first order).

I wouldn’t dismiss Ghost licenses, if the organization has a way to get into someone’s volume program. Ghost for us runs between US$6.00 and US$9.00 per seat (we are in the Elite Forecast Program, Band A) and nearly any related organization in our area should be able to purchase Ghost under it (and nearly any of the Symantec products) through our preferred software vendor. We are up for renewal in December, and the last time, the program changed significantly, so there is no telling what will happen if we don’t make our "forecasted" amount of $ level ($75K). Symantec doesn’t offer a separate charity pricing program, as far as I know, but they do offer academic pricing now, although it seems to be significantly higher than what we pay under Elite.

Of course, free is good too 😉