The prices at mandriva store are confusing...mainly because i don't understand what that comma is for. Let's take the Mandriva Linux 2006 Discovery Box at 44,90-EUR if i google "44,90 EUR to dollars" it comes back as 44,90 Euros = 53,75428 U.S. dollars. googling again with a period comes back as the same thing with a period. which seems high since i can go into a computer store and get mandriva 10.1 powerpack for 8 dollars. even it is an older version that's a bit of a drastic difference in price...

Am i doing the conversion right?

Try a money exchange site:

http://www.xe.com/ucc/

This is more to do with money conversions than Linux and so is now moved to General. The comma is the European method of doing the same thing as the decimal point in money everywhere else.

When you use the old version, you obviously miss out on the new features but if its not a problem for you then thats fine. I think that if you join the Mandriva Club, you get more perks than buying a one off boxed set.

some european countries use different separators than the US. in germany for example, USD 1,000.50 (one thousand dollars and fifty cents) is written as USD 1'000,50

as for the price difference, computer programs (especially free/open source software) are much like newspapers or any other kind of information - very valuable when fresh, and almost worthless when outdated. note that with free/open source software, you don't pay for the software itself (the bits and bytes) but for the services that come with it (professional technical support, club membership, shiny box etc.).

Or you can just download Mandriva for free directly from their site: http://frontal1.mandriva.com/en/downloads/mirrors

Though it's not their 6 CD powerpack edition but I doubt most use all 6 CD's and all the applications and doc's on them..