To be honest I have quite a bit of sympathy with OAT and Alex at Bristol.
The market for professional pilot training is quite small.
The standard of notes and training aids has come on leaps and bounds in the last 5 years with I should imagine quite alot of hard work and investment from all concerned.
You only need to see the CBT courses of some manufactures to see how advanced the material is from both parties. That old 737 CBT CD that was doing the rounds.
Most these days won't have had the joy of seeing some of the utter rubbish which was touted as learning material at the start of JAR.
The computer based training aids shouldn't in my opinion be viewed as a physical product. Its a service provided to you, to aid your learning. If you went to OAT or Alex and booked a revision course you wouldn't be suprised if they told you where to go if you turned up with a mate to watch with you. The only thing the CD-rom is allowing you to do is use the talents of the instructor who has created the CD with the help of some computer guru to learn at your own pace in your own home. Which presumably worked as you don't require them anymore.
Microsoft is of course a completely different kettle of fish who have manipulated the market and forced upgrades on customers who recieve little if any gain (quite often a hit due to upgrades of hardware required) from the dictates of a monopoly supplier. Who quite robustly use immoral practises to remove any innovation coming from 3rd parties. And I have no moral problems at all using a product which I didn't want to upgrade, and I certainly don't use any of the features which the upgrade has compared to my legal copy of an old vesion which they have decided I can't use anymore and didn't work properly in the first place.