The value of the OED isn't just in the defintions, IMO. It's all about the attestations, and the OED has the finest collection of historical attestations anywhere.
I heard about this on NPR the other day, they were saying the print version cost $3,000, but the online only version would only be 1/3 of that price. $1,000 for an online dictionary? WTF?
I just bought a Kindle (one of the new ones that just came out on Thursday) and it came with a copy of the OED. That alone is worth the purchase price to me.
In Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex, there is a library that stocks all the books published in print form even though nobody uses printed books, they just plug their brains into the internet thingy. It was totally empty with robot librarians stocking and restocking the unused books.
The OED is more than a dictionary, and few individuals buy the full multivolume set. Real nerds will buy the 1-volume compact, but usually these babies are purchased by libraries. I'm an academic librarian, and I happily sent ours to the stacks when I was able to subscribe to the online OED for our university. This is a good move by Oxford.
@10, the Kindle does come with the New Oxford American Dictionary. It also comes with the Oxford Dictionary of English. But you're right, the ODE is not the OED.
Interestingly, "adze" is in the ODE.