Care in the Community

UK designers who want to buy Creative Suite 3 packages will pay a premium compared with their counterparts in the US, as our own Richard Thurston has pointed out. That's not all, though. The twists of Adobe's arcane pricing are also causing a bit of headscratching for a couple of members of the company's user forum.

One member, who owns several Adobe products, notes that in the US, it's more expensive to upgrade directly from Photoshop 7 than to upgrade first to CS2.3 then upgrade from that to CS3.

Another user points out that owning all the separate elements that make up a CS3 Design Premium package doesn't mean you get a better deal on the upgrade than someone who owns just one program.

Take a look at Adobe's store yourself. It all seems somewhat confusing. Doubtless, Adobe put a lot of thought into its pricing--maybe it should have thought on a bit longer.

Whether you want to ask "Does religion do more harm than good?" or "Where's the cheapest place to buy memory?", try the ZDnet Forums.

You can start debates or tap the collective wisdom of fellow members by going to the ZDNet Forums page. Just click on the "Start new Discussion" link and complete the "Post your Discussion" box.

You can even set an alert to to be told when someone replies to the post.

Every contribution is published, and we'll highlight some of our favourites across the site. Discussions are a great way to raise your profile.

The link to kick off a thread is there on all the individual forum pages, such as Software Forum, so you can get going if inspiration hits you while you're reading. Why not take a look, and try it out now?


Technorati Profile

Today Adobe finally let everybody else in on the details of what's coming in Creative Suite 3, the update to Photoshop and other software. There'll be not one, but six--count 'em--versions of the package, set to ship at different times this year, as well as 13 standalone apps.

As for price, CS3 packages range from about £830 to £2,300, with upgrades coming cheaper.

That's a hefty chunk of cash. So is it value for money? Photoshop can now handle some video image editing, and several applications have a more Web-friendly sheen. Is that what people want? Tell us what you make of it here, and you might win one of our warm ZDNet UK hats going to the five best posts.

Adobe's planning to make the formal announcement of Creative Suite 3 tomorrow. The overhaul of its publishing applications is expected to be one of the largest in the software maker's history.

We'd like to find out what you, the community, hope to see in CS3. While some details have trickled out, a number of features won’t be disclosed until the announcement.

So please let us know what you think. Would you like to see a Web-based version of Photoshop? The integration of Dreamweaver and other Macromedia applications? Will the planned built-in support for Intel-based Macs mean better performance? Just post a reply to this blog.

Update: A dig through the ZDNet UK treasure trove has unearthed a bunch of zdnet.co.uk hats to give away. (They'll come in handy, now it's a bit nippy.) The five best posts will each get one--so get typing.

Actually, it should be "Are you feeling clever?"--you'll need to come up with a spiffy tie-breaker to get your hands on the Sony VAIO G11-Series notebook we've got as a prize in our latest competition. You've got until 9 April to enter, so get thinking.

Over here at ZDNet central, we've become quite keen on the idea of giving you the chance to win free stuff. So we're looking at other ways of putting up prizes. Stay tuned for updates.