What do you mean by it "sucks payment wise"?
I have to select a reporting solution next week as well, but I didn't see anything with Crystal that I needed other than the one time price to purchase Crystal Developer. But I'm assuming I missed something in the fine print.
We just chose Active Reports for .NET (from Data Dynamics). It was definitely cheaper than Crystal in the long run, but it also had some features we liked better, like Xml report definitions and the ability to "brand" the end-user report designer. Other options that were considered were a reporting package from ComponentOne and report add-in for SQL Server. The report add-in for SQL is still in beta, so it wasn't even a possible factor for us, and Active Reports simply has a great history with lots of success stories that the one from ComponentOne couldn't match. I also saw a few others, but they failed obvious criteria and were not considered any further, so I don't even recall their names now.
Excellent! Thanks Paul. You certainly eased my mind in this issue. It's very strange that so few solutiong exist...
Hang in there Roy - SQL2K Reporting Services is coming soon. :)
I'd go with ActiveReports (it also has better support than Crystal).
+1 for ActiveReports. Support is great, and the reports are highly customizeable - you can make 'em purty.
Done! I've recommended it today to my boss. Thanks for all your help guys :)