I’d like to use some of the applications in the Adobe Creative Suite 4 for my website and other projects. The web premium package is £1,374.25. The master collection is £2,264.35. Who can afford these prices? Granted that Adobe do heavily discount for students (£228.25 and £454.25 respectively), but my student days are long gone.
The really annoying thing about it though, is that I could download the master collection for free from one of the various pirate sites that are out there. But I don’t want to. I want a legal copy.
I bought a new PC recently as my old one gave up after 9 years. It cost a very reasonable £500. Why, when PCs are so much cheaper, is software so expensive? I think if software houses charged a more realistic tariff, they would send the pirates to Davy Jones’ Locker.
What about open source software? You could try inkscape for vector graphics, Gimp for photos/raster graphics and if you do any dtp, try scribus.