Fangs of a dilemma

I find myself somewhat entangled in the sticky fangs of a Leopard-based dilemma. When I bought my Macbook a couple of years ago, it came with version 10.4 (Tiger) of the Macintosh Operating system (MacOS X). A year later Apple issued 10.5 (Leopard). I chose not to upgrade because (a) the price was too high and (b) it looked like it would degrade the performance of my system. Now however Apple are releasing (August 28) 10.6 (Snow Leopard). This apparently has all the advantages of Leopard but without the hit on system resources.

Snow Leopard

My dilemma is this: Apple have priced the upgrade from Leopard to Snow Leopard at $29 (which due to the unfathomable way that currency conversions and rip-off Britain works equates to £25), however if you want to upgrade from Tiger to Snow Leopard, Apple say you should purchase the $169 Mac Box Set which includes new versions of iWork and iLife. However, many of us don’t use iWork or iLife. Therefore why should we have to pay $140 for two DVD’s we will never use?

Now according to reliable sources, the disk in the $29 upgrade and the $169 box set containing the OS are exactly the same, and will quite happily install directly on top of Tiger. So, what to do? Have Apple shot their foot off or are they being very clever an hoping that people will at least pay something for upgrading their computer instead of downloading a torrent?