[kmarketing]

Hi,

I noticed that if I was to buy an apple using my education discount, I would be able to get Adobe Creative Suite 3 at a nice discount along with the ipod, etc. I was looking to get Creative Suite anyway, so this sounds like a great opportunity.

I'm hoping that you can help with these questions:

1. Which one should I get? I plan to learn some web design over the summer, and have several domains/websites I'd like to develop.

2. If I buy this Suite 3 using the education discount, is it not as good as if I was to buy the "regular" one? Also, would I be okay to use it for the sites that might be commercial?

3. Is the suite pre-loaded on the machine, or do I get the cd's, packaging, etc?

I really don't know much about this, so any help will be great. I'm really excited about this, because I was planning on getting the suite anyway.

Please help!
Thanks so much!!

[kmarketing]

Hi,

It looks like I narrowed it down to the Adobe Creative Suite 3 WEB Premium package or the Adobe Creative Suite 3 DESIGN Premium package.

They seem to have the same software except:
The Design package ($349) comes with InDesign CS3 and
The Web package ($299) comes with Fireworks CS3 and Contribute CS3

Which do you think is best?
Thanks so much for your help!

[shinykaro]

It looks like you don't need the premium package.

Fireworks can largely be substituted by ImageReady, Photoshop, and Illustrator, and Contribute is necessary only if you're creating websites for other users and you want them to, wait for it, -contribute- content without messing with your nice clean code. And anyhow, if you're going to have such an arrangement with multiple users having access to multiple sites you've designed via Contribute, you'd need them to get their own licenses for it.

The packages you get with an educational discount are exactly the same as the regular versions - the only differences are in the license agreement. You cannot use educational software for commercial purposes, i.e. paid work.

Edit: That means you can design a commercial site, meaning a site for a business, however, legally you cannot get paid for that work because if you're using the educational license, the assumption is essentially that it's a student project.

You might want to confirm this with Adobe, but a little birdie told me once that it's perfectly legal to get the education version of Creative Suite and then upgrade to the full version at the upgrade price. But if you're getting CS3 that's a moot point anyway because it was released so recently.

[kmarketing]

Hi,

Thanks for the info. Both are premium packages, so would you say the DESIGN package is better or the WEB package.

Also, I won't be getting paid for any work for designing my sites, but hopefully the sites that I develop will make some money. Is that allowed with these suites?

Thanks so much for your help!