I've been using .mac later MobileMe since 2002. Quite frankly 99$ has been a bargain. The syncing of calendars (+ syncing of outlook at work) alone has been worth it for me. Not to mention the syncing of my keychains, that feature was a gods sent, and with iCloud I'm a bit worried what to do now (no support for keychain syncing
)
Anyways my point is, it might not have been worth it for you, but it sure as h*ll was worth it for me.

One would argue that if the customer thinks it's fair, then by no means are they overcharging. Or do I have my economics incorrect?

I hate to disagree with you, but Apple has been offering 'free' virus scanners with their .mac accounts since the times of MacOSX.1. I use the word free, even though its 70euros / year to be a member.

The main problem is that hospitals use old standards, while a xml version of hl7 is out. No one supports it, old segmented textfiles are used to transport information to/from systems. The protocol for transmitting the information (MLLP) is as archaic as they come.
This tends to make things very complicated when dealing with things that needs to be there in todays hospital software (digital signing of requests / studies and reports) and leads to the software developers having to make hacks here and there to support this old framework of communication.
Yet another issue here in Europe is that all software development teams must have the CE marking for medical devices with an extra attachment for medical software. This is very expensive and removes any new companies entering the field, so the competition is between already established players. Big companies that are uneasy with change in their software to make things better for the staff at the hospital.

Yes, I work in this field making software for radiology and mammography departments. While not a huge company (we were just at the right place at the right time), we put a lot of effort into the workflow just right for the staff at the hospital, and not the hospital management.

Had the exact same problem on my old D820, system overheating leading to having the brick go to 1ghz on both cores all the time. I find it funny that now this is about E6400 / E6500. Luckily my E6400 is running just fine. Never had an issue with it. That old D820 though, they must have replaces everything inside it 3 times over.

Had the similar problems with my d820, due to speedstep it would hang around 1ghz on both cores due to heat problems, dell changed the inners like 3 times. Finally our company bought me a precision m6400 instead, has been spinning like a dream.