Scawen told us quite a while back their were something like 30 000 S2 licensed users if I remember correctly? If that's right then I'd imagine it's gone up a fair bit since then.
I was only commenting on the common arguement that we see often that if you can afford a PC and internet connection, then you should be able to afford to pay for an LFS license. In no way do I argue that LFS is or is not expensive with what I wrote. Just wanted to state that it is very possible to have no money, yet still have a PC and internet.
I've had 8 PC's since 1995 and I've been on the internet since then. I've paid for only my first PC in 1995 and my current one last year. I've never paid for internet access since going online in 1996 until a few years ago when I moved away from the free access being a long distance phone call. I recently have seen that the free internet now has a local number for me, so I'm curious about it. But I do doubt I would be able to play LFS on it. My current 56k has proved flawless over the last 2 years I've been with LFS (except for heavily server mod usage as in the Caribbean Cruise servers). I'm even hesitant to eventually go broadband as I time out less than I see others time out on the servers (limiting to pretty much 15 others that is, which isn't hard in the US.)
LFS is remarkable value for the money, not doubt about that. Also each stage gets cheaper, because the price for S2 and S3 was set when S1 came out. So, compared to the costs of living, S2 was already cheaper than S1. S3 is probably at least 3 years away (I consider this a rather optimistic estimate). So by that time, costs of living will have gone up even more, but S3 will still be 12 gbp .