JJ, I'm with you, especially on the bottled water part. Here the situation is a bit different, because water in local stores is not as expensive as you say - though it is in bars etc. I found it annoying, travelling abroad, that a bottle of Sprite usually costed less than a bottle of water. And I also find it quite insulting, considering after all Sprite is also made of water
And I know it's not original, but nobody's saying it, so I'm gonna say it myself:
Microsoft - they must stop investing more in advertising their products than in actually making them work right!