ChessBase

I can honestly say I don't understand Chessbase. It looks incredibly cool I will admit, and the interface is flawless. I just do not understand why it is so popular and expensive. I know it offers a large database of games. there are also large databases on sites like chesstempo and even chess.com. chessbase also allows you to analyze games with an engine. so do other interfaces. so WHAT IS SO GREAT ABOUT CHESSBASE AND WHY DOES IT COST SO MUCH. someone please tell me I just don't get it

I have never understood the fascination with paying hundreds of dollars for something you can get for free, just to store chess games on. 

Use chessDB (free), and down load games from a site like theweekinchess.com

I don't understand it. any old cheap interface like scid or arena seems like it could get the job done just as well, given that the user uses an outside database 

Me neither, I don't understand either. 

it's so ridiculously expensive. I am sure there is a reason, but it is not clear to me. you don't need chessbase to use the top engines, nor do you need it to have access to large databases, nor do you need it to save your games/analysis

That is SUCH a selfish attitude! Don't you know that running a major chess software company is very expensive? I mean, there's all those employees to pay, and I'm sure some of them actually do some work! Then there's all those plane trips to the major tournaments for the pres/CEO. And I'm sure there are a bunch of other important expenses that I'm not thinking of right now!

So get off your duff and order a few copies of Chessbase. You can figure out what to do with it later, I'm sure.

You've stumbled on one of the great myths of the chess world.  Chessbase is not that great, and certainly not required to own.  Nearly everything it does can be replicated just as well or even better by free software.  I personally use SCID vs. PC for my database.  You can make the chess board look very attractive in SvP also, for the record, and it has fantastic database searching capabilities.

On the linux side, keep your eye on Scidb, which is new database software in development.  It already supports both SCID and Chessbase database formats, and will also support CQL searching.  (the author says there will be a windows version of scidb, too, but that is looking increasingly unlikely to me)

I think scid's database is limited, but other free databases like chesstempo's are just about as good as chessbase's. chessbase just boggles my mind. I am dying to know why it so so expensive and so popular

I don't understand what you mean by "scid's database."  You can load any collection of chess games into scid, even the exact same one that comes with chessbase.  Do you mean the number of games or what you can do with them?  I don't see any real limitation to either of them when compared to chessbase/chesstempo.

oh I see what you mean. there is one "example" database that comes with scid, and I assumed it was the only one that you can access

No, I have many databases.  One that has all of my USCF games, one that has all of my serious online games, and several "master game" databases.  One of the latter has over 5 million games in it, but I prefer to use smaller ones that are better maintained (very similar to the chesstempo database, which I also use sometimes).