"Free" Adobe Creative Suite 2

[Ddrak]

http://www.adobe.com/downloads/cs2_downloads/index.html

Dd

[Freecare Spiritwise]

I saw that yesterday. Awesome. It's a great move, for a number of reasons. First and foremost, they just converted most of the people pirating their software to customers they can someday potentially up-sell. It's bloody brilliant.

[Freecare Spiritwise]

...or not

http://arstechnica.com/information-tech ... -accident/

[Ddrak]

Yeah, it's why I put "free" in quotes. I don't think they meant it to be free but the way they are talking now indicates they have decided to just run with it. I'm thinking it will turn out brilliant for them, which may change a whole bunch of attitudes.

Dd

[Fallakin Kuvari]

Its free now. No Adobe ID required. This is the most awesome thing ever (even though I have CS3 on my mac).

[Minute]

I don't know why they don't do it more often. I mean a consumer isn't going to pay Photoshop prices. The prices are fucking REDONK! $700 for Photoshop & even Elements is $100. That's why they don't sell shit that isn't commercial. Instead of spending all the money trying to fight piracy that is both not going to work & fighting against people who wouldn't pay those stupid prices anyway, they should sell or give away it away as non-commercial use software. Then they can continue to charge those stupid prices for commercial use. They soft of do this with students, with student pricing, which is smart, but open the fucking field man.

I think the problem is that they have no real competition right now. I mean in editing it is absolutely the go-to software for anything in real production. Don't gimmie the GIMP/PSP shit either. Those numbers are silly. Someone needs to step up with some real alternatives & they wouldn't be charging $2,599 for the master suite. REEEEEEDONK!

[Freecare Spiritwise]

If they go through with it then I think it's an awesome idea. That's the way to beat piracy, by co-opting it. And if Adobe was only accidentally brilliant, well, all's well that ends well.

[Ddrak]

Anything moderately expensive with a free non-commercial license is awesome marketing for the company. I know we purchase a bunch of stuff at work simply because people already know how to use it from the free versions (saves us a bucket in training).

Dd