Adobe CS4 on trial now
MAKER OF OVERPRICED software, Adobe, is offering a free taste of its Creative Suite 4 software for mere mortals who will never be able to afford the real thing.
Free-trialers can now download the full suite of graphics, photo and video manipulation tools including Photoshop, Indesign, Illustrator and Premiere, among others, or mix and match individual components directly from the Adobe site.
Each download comes in at around 1GB, but wannabe users will need a free Adobe account to get at the goodies.
All programmes are fully functional for thirty days, after which you'll have to spend many frustrating hours ridding your hard drives of the evidence (if you're a Windows user), or you can empty your life savings into Adobe's bank account and have the software permanently installed.
The standard version of the CS4 Design suite weighs in at £1,051 if you have the boxed version delivered to your door. If you want to download it, you'll have to cough up another £31.
No... we couldn't quite work that one out either. µ
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..thing has always baffled me. It's been the case for a long time when purchasing Adobe products.
Maybe they feel you should pay extra for the convenience of having it sooner rather than waiting 3 weeks for it to be delivered :)
And people wonder how Pirate Bay hit 25 Million peers! $1k+ in a recession? Go f' yourself, Adobe.
Yay open sorce... Gimp cost's nothing.
Since the software is used by very overpaid people the price isn't that weird at all, and for normal users who are also law-abiding they made photoshop elements for $99.- I think it is, and then there's the student versions, and the rest get the warez versions of course.
So in the end everybody is happy as long as you don't try to use the cheap/free versions to make tons of money thinking you can ruin the whole system because you are so special.
Recession or not, $1k isn't much for the software like Adobe's. Adobe's products are for *professionals* and amateurs who have money -- and make money. It's not for po' ass schmucks who only use Photoshop (and then, not *really* use it) to make themselves look less dumpy on their blogs. Hell, even if you're a po' ass college student, you can usually get it on the cheap from your university anyway.

For those who actually need the Creative Suite for their *job*, $1k is going to pay for itself as a fraction of the first project that uses it. Such people probably also own a copy already, so they're paying only the $600 upgrade cost-- which includes nearly all the software Adobe offers.

Adobe probably isn't shedding many tears for "losing" the folks who are grabbing it off the torrents either. They're non-customers who will probably never buy it anyway.
...it's the ridiculous difference between buying their software in the US and almost anywhere else in world. (It is much more expensive in Europe, for example.)

The reason Adobe do this is because they know they can get away with it. All their usual explanations involving different distribution channels, the cost of localisation and the higher cost of doing business outside the US are, frankly, bollocks.