The purpose of wire glass is to keep a person's hand (and arm) from passing thru if they happen to push on the glass and it breaks. As far as the actual breaking goes, its only slightly stronger than plate of the same thickness. Its also extremely expensive in the US because its not produced here due to some environmental reg that makes its production too expensive. My brother in law is in the glass business and IIRC most of the wire glass he gets comes from Germany. He mentioned a while back 1/4" wire glass cost him about $8/sq ft delivered.
1/4" laminated glass has typically cost glass peddlers about $3.50/sq ft over the last few years, but that price has dropped a bunch in the last few months. so its closer to $2 now. The labor in cutting laminated glass is at least double the labor for cutting sheet or plate. It has to be scratched on both sides, and then alcohol is poured along the break and set afire to soften the plastic. The piece is then "bent" slowly to expose the plastic, and the plastic is cut with a razor.
The waste tends to be higher since any glitch in the scratching process can cause a runout in the break, rendering the piece useless. The same applies to monolithic glass, but the laminate has to be scratched twice, doubling the chance for a boo-boo. In anything other than very small pieces, cutting laminate becomes a 2 man job, mainly because it takes such careful handling in turning it over to make the scratch on the 2nd side.
I've seen laminated glass used in machine tool windows, but overall its probably one of the most expensive options. It'd be rare to find a MT window that didn't have rounded corners, and those add further complications in the cutting of laminated, both in difficulty and in the likelihood of scrapping the piece due to a runout.
Glass shop material markups tend to be very high as compared to the sorts of material markups we're accustomed to being able to get in our own businesses. My b-i-l does quite a few replacement MT windows to customer patterns, and he can sell the plastic for 2-1/2 times what he pays for it, add the labor, and still be the cheapest in town among 3 or 4 glass shops that stock plastic sheet. Some of his customers use acrylic for replacement and others want polycarb.
Shipping costs can be a killer on plastic sheet since none of the major warehouses run their own trucks. Everything has to be skidded and cardboard wrapped, and it still gets probably the worst common carrier rates on the planet since the truckers can't pile anything on it or stand it on edge to take up less space. Its not unusual for my b-i-l to drive from here to Charlotte to pick up a half dozen sheets of plastic. Round trip is about 220 miles, but he can save about $250 in skidding and shipping costs for his effort. That figure is probably down somewhat now with fuel costs lower, but the shipping on this stuff is still high in comparison to most things.
About the only way you can likely save any real money on window replacements is to pick up a few sheets of material from one of the warehouses next time you're near Columbia, and cut the stuff yourself. That'd likely save you on the order of 2/3 to 3/4 of what I'd imagine you paid for the windows in the pic. The cutting is fast and dirt simple with a vertical bandsaw or even with a good handheld jigsaw. Saw 'em out and buzz around the edge with a DA sander and about 100 grit open coat paper, and they're ready to go.
One thing you didn't mention was whether you installed them or if you took the panels to a glass shop and had them do it. If they did it, a good portion of the cost could also be in installation labor since some gaskets can be hell to deal with, particularly if they have some age on them. There are tools made specifically for the job, available from C R Laurence, that make the job go much easier, and they aren't particularly expensive. If you installed them yourself, you did all the hard work, so it'd be well worthwhile to stock a few sheets of material and keep the profit off the gravy end of the work for yourself.