I've never understood cheap alternatives.  If Microsoft Office was priced too high for me, I'd just use an open source alternative.  Why bother with a cheap imitation? ValuSoft Office Suite 2005 just seems a bit too much for me.  $19.99.

The support from a software vendor is key; all software will have its bugs/idiosyncracies, but finding solutions and fixing such problems are essential.  Microsoft's technet KB, for example, does an excellent job of capturing all of this information.  I have yet to encounter another KB hosted/provided by a software vendor that comes EVEN CLOSE to that level.

I suggest OpenOffice, for example, simply because of the user community.  The userbase, as a collective whole, must (and will) provide some kind of positive support for other users, slowly but surely evolving software, and improving it.  Indeed, such is the nature and principle behind open source software.

Since closed-source software then is to act as a "value added" service on top of this open source baseline, I don't see ValuSoft's Office Suite offering anything that comes close to OpenOffice's level, let alone Microsoft's.

ValuSoft makes such products as "505 Great Games" and "Custom 3D Home", all rip offs of other software products.

The support leaves much to be desired: http://www.valusoftsupport.com/Results.asp?search=full&show=titles&resul%0Dts=20&submit=prod&pid=369

Buy it here http://www.compusa.com/products/product_info.asp?product_code=318340&pfp=BROWSE

Product Page http://www.valusoft.com/products/office2005.html

Why spend hundreds of dollars on Microsoft® Office when you can have a feature-rich alternative for a fraction of the price?

Word Processing: Work on office files at home, use a word processor to write letters, create family schedules, organize your children’s activities, work on school projects and more.

• Open, edit and save any Microsoft® Word document.
• Create new documents, saving them in the standard Microsoft® Word .DOC format.
• Work with ease through the word processor’s features, which operate just like Microsoft® Word’s.

Spreadsheets: Create balance sheets for your small business, manage your household budget and more.

• Open, edit and save any Microsoft® Excel document.
• Start new spreadsheets and save them in the standard Microsoft® Excel .XLS format.
• Present your data instantly with the Graph Wizard to create 2D and 3D graphs.
• ODBC support allows you to analyze complex data from any ODBC compliant database.

PDF Creation: Send documents and spreadsheets to business associates or clients via email that cannot be edited.

• Create fully compatible .PDF (Portable Document Format) documents that are viewable with the FREE Adobe Acrobat® Reader.
• Send documents and pictures via PDF, which can be viewed on nearly every computer, but cannot be edited by end users.

Mail Merge: Save time on your next mailing.

• Personalize your mailings by accessing, editing, organizing and merging data into a document then printing labels, envelopes or letters.
• Insert contacts from an Outlook or Outlook Express address book or use spreadsheet data to create and manage the data from your merge.
• Merge documents directly from .XLS, .DBF, .CSV or through ODBC.

Photo Editing & Organization: Correct red eye, enhance, organize and share your digital photos.

• Optimize your digital photos and images to restore color, contrast and brightness with one-click Auto Image Tuning.
• Use the red eye removal tool to get professional-quality red eye correction every time.
• Save countless hours on photo management: rename, resize, crop, convert formats, rotate and flip multiple photos simultaneously.
• Easily publish your photos to the web or send via email using the web photo album feature to automatically reduce large digital photos for one click email delivery.

Features:

• Create, edit and save documents in Microsoft Word and Excel formats.
• Enhance documents with pictures, sounds, tables, OLE objects, custom styles & more.
• Present spreadsheet data in 2D and 3D graphs.
• Include formulas and “what-if” scenarios in your spreadsheets.
• Create PDFs for quick and easy document distribution.
• Mail merge for easy letter, envelope and label creation.
• Remove red eye, crop, rotate and convert digital photos.
• Restore photo color, contrast and brightness with one click editing.
• Publish your photos to the web or send via email.
• Design your own photo slideshows with professional transitions and sounds.
• Create photo CDs to share with family and friends.

I think its partially the logo as well.