So, about two years ago, I purchased a perfectly valid, legal copy of Microsoft Office for the Mac. I don't recall where I purchased the suite, it could have been directly from Microsoft, for all I recall, but I have the official hologram sticker and, when I installed it on my computer, a license key.
Every so often, the Microsoft Updater would run, and tell me that it had an upgrade to install. The first time I selected "Update!" the program scanned my entire harddrive. Having no love for Microsoft, I was completely suspicious of an update program that needs to scan my entire harddrive in order to update one program, and cancelled the update.
Well, a few months ago, I decided I was tired of the constant requests to update the Office suite, so I said sure, update.
The updater scanned my harddrive, then deleted my copy of Word.
I cancelled the update program before it could delete the other LEGALLY PURCHASED programs, but not before I was completely pissed off at Microsoft for deleting the programs in the first place.
So, I've gone these several months without Word, and seemed to be doing okay, until I needed to draw up a contract for a new client. And then I ran into problems.
Apple to the rescue, of sorts. Pages, Apple's semi-answer to Word, will import Word document file, so I've switched to Pages. It's a bit annoying to load, but I'll be damned if I'm going to buy another copy of Word after this last fiasco.