I've been eager to upgrade my version of Adobe Photoshop, the original CS version, because the current version (CS4), is the last one that I can upgrade to from CS without paying the full price. And looking for something to spend some of my Christmas money on, I figured this would be a good time to get the upgrade. I knew Adobe had some student pricing for their products, and since Donna is a doctoral student at U of H, I asked her to look into it.
What I found out was astounding. A normal retail price for a Photoshop upgrade is about $200. I learned that I could get the extended version of Photoshop for about that with the student prices. That was a nice bonus, although I didn't think I would be using much of the additional features the extended version offers.
What I didn't realize at first, though, that this $200 price for the extended version of Photoshop referred to the full-install version, and not the upgrade version. The full-install version of Photoshop Extended retails for about $1000! So that's a 80% discount! More poking around the Adobe site revealed that, for $200, I could also get the Adobe Creative Suite 4, Design Standard, which retails for $1400! This is much more exciting, since it comes with Adobe Photoshop (non-extended), but also InDesign, Illustrator, and Acrobat Pro! I doubt I'll use InDesign much, but I'm looking forward to Illustrator, since I've not had a good vector drawing application on my Mac since Canvas 5!
It took some research on my part to convince myself that this discount wasn't going to result in some crippled version - i.e. can only be used while enrolled, or has to be re-licensed every so often - but I've convinced myself it's A-OK. The U of H computer store does mark it up a little (to $250 for a 82% discount), but that's still an amazing bargain.
So now, I'm pretty excited. I think Donna can order it this weekend, then pick it up at U of H before her next class. Ove the next few months, then, I'll have to figure out what all that software can do!