What I was saying is that the reason the payments are monthly for web services is because they are exactly that services, in addition to products. I, as a stude

What I was saying is that the reason the payments are monthly for web services is because they are exactly that services, in addition to products. I, as a student on a low budget, feel more secure buying a desktop app at a one-time cost and being personally responsible for my data there than paying a regular fee forever and knowing that if I stop paying my data could be gone. That's mostly my irrational fear of commitment to just about anything though. But more rationally, the server could go down at any time (EC2 outage possibly) and I could be stuck without my data when I need it. If I know that I'm going to need my data that I have locally, I can store it on my phone and take it with me if taking my computer with me isn't feasible. And so maybe web apps make you pay more for more. What if I'm perfectly fine with what I used to have and don't want more. I'm paying more for the same if I never plan on using the service anywhere but on machines that I can easily keep synched myself.