Having also just had to buy a copy of 2006 in order to keep using payroll. My comments are:
It is a con. But if you only have to upgrade every 2 years the annual cost is not great and who knows there may be some new features :- )
But as for the debate Sage vs QB. I use QB 2005 Pro, QB payroll, Sage L50 v12 and Instant Payroll. I don't think you can say one is "better" than the other. They both have advantages and disadvantages. I certainly curse the poor interface of Sage more often than I do QB. Lists that are hard to navigate, awful report writer, inability to display/edit a journal once it's posted, most reports dependent upon account/customer/product codes being in sequence to name but a few. But the fact that you can't change things has it's benefits and although the Sage report writer is awful you can create some useful reports. Sage departments are more useful than QB classes. It is probably quicker to enter lots of data in Sage. You can import data from a csv file which I find useful for budgetting (work out a monthly budget in Excel and import it) The default codes for nominals when entering supplier invoices are useful. QB's strengths are that it is so easy to do things and correcting mistakes is simplicity itself. The chart of accounts is not constrained by account numbers so you can add accounts and have as many levels in your P&L as you want. The interface with Excel is good and being able to drill down eg from the P&L to transactions is extremely useful. And also for VAT where I like to run through the VAT transactions before filing my return to make sure I have correctly assigned VAT. I like being able to reconcile any balance sheet account. The QB reports are extemely well thought out, things like P&L by month or Balance sheet by month are easy to do in QB.
But it's like any tool - there is generally a way to do what you want with it if you search.
And personally I have yet to crash QB but Sage is a different matter.
Mike