lifebsideben

I upgraded to Leopard at home, which is awesome, because it’s a really great OS. Well, so was Tiger, and to be honest there aren’t a lot of really significant improvements, but lots of little ones that are nice. Definitely the new Finder is a lot more useful (I’ve stopped using PathFinder, sorry guys) and the speed of Spotlight is much improved (making Google Desktop Search a lot less critical). But, some software isn’t compatible, as to be expected. The worst bit is that you can no longer install the older Adobe apps.

You see, I own a copy of the ‘Adobe Design Collection’, which is basically what they called Creative Suite 1 before officially rebranding it that way. I use it occasionally (Illustrator mostly, but sometimes PhotoShop too.) I’m pretty happy with the older versions of the apps in it, but after upgrading to Leopard (and getting a new Intel Mac), it wouldn’t install and I decided to flip for an upgrade to the latest version, CS3, for $400. Pretty steep given my usage pattern, but heck, it’s pretty good software and I would like to be able to use it when I want to.

Some background: the Adobe Design Collection has all the exact same software as CS1 (PhotoShop 7, Illustrator 10, InDesign 2, and Acrobat Pro 5). It cost me $900 when I bought it. Since it has the exact same software as CS1, I thought the upgrade path would be the same. However, there is apparently two big differences between the ADC and CS1: 1. I have serial numbers for each individual product, instead of just one for the suite as a whole and 2. that means I can’t upgrade as if I had CS1, even though I own licenses for all the same versions of the apps. This really sucks, and I didn’t know that, and I didn’t figure it out until I got to the step in the installer (near the very end, 40 minutes in, after it’s actually installed) that my serial number(s) wouldn’t work. Grrr. I called Adobe sales and it went something like this:

Adobe Sales Rep: “yeah, you have to have real CS1″

Me: “well, I do, I have ADC, which came with the same software”

ASR: “I know, but sorry, you need to buy the ‘UPSELL’ version of CS3 instead”

Me: “how much does that cost?”

ASR: “$900″

Me: “uh, but it says here [as I check amazon] I only need any of the older apps to qualify for that. I have ALL of the older apps. Seems like it should be a lot less expensive. And I don’t even really care about a couple of these apps. Illustrator and Photoshop mostly.”

ASR: “Well, you an upgrade the individual applications as well.”

Me: “Oh, ok, how much would that be?”

ASR: “It’s $200 each except for Acrobat which is $150″

Me: “So, $200 for each of InDesign, Photoshop, and Illustrator, and $150 for Acrobat. So even if I were to upgrade ALL of them to the CS3 versions, it’d still be cheaper than buying the ‘Upsell’ version of the suite–$750 vs $900?”

ASR: “Yes, but when you have the suite, you can then upgrade to the other suites, and get two more programs, Dreamweaver and Flash, for just $400 more!”

Me: “Hmm, I care about those even less, though. [I notice 'upsell' is certainly the key word here!] I guess I’ll have to think about it.”

Now, the sales rep was actually very friendly and patient with me as I was getting kind of frustrated, so I’ll give him a lot of credit here. But seriously, what kind of sense does it make that folks with CS1 pay $400 to upgrade, people with only one of the three qualifying applications pay $900 to upgrade to the full suite, and me, who bought the suite already, and could pay $750 to upgrade the apps individually, has to pay $900 as well? That seems nuts. I mean really, at least make it cost the same to upgrade to the suite, as it does to upgrade individually. Preferably, make it cost a lot closer to the $400 than the $900 price, too. Adobe did offer to refund me the price of the non-functional upgrade DVD (well, assuming Amazon wouldn’t take it as a return), but I really don’t know if I want to spend $900 on upgrades for software I don’t use that much. I’ve been working hard to get legit and pay for all the shareware and other apps I use, even buying Office for the Mac (even though I extremely rarely use it), but that just feels too expensive. I’m a little worried, though, that CS4 will come out at some point and my old versions won’t qualify for any kind of upgrade, so that would suck even more. Bah.

One more thing, I also asked the rep if there were any plans to just get the old apps to work under Leopard, since I really could live without the upgrade completely if that were the case. He said no, only CS3 runs under Leopard. Apparently, even CS2, which was being sold as recently as 8 months ago, doesn’t install/work under Leopard, and they don’t plan to make it do so. That really sucks! I’d be a lot more upset if I had just upgraded to CS2 recently. In the meantime, I’m still mulling over the options. I’m leaning toward just upgrading Illustrator for now, as that’s the one I actually “need” at the moment.

Tags: Adobe, bitching, software