RE: Software purchase advice needed

["Nuckols, Kenneth M" <Kenneth -dot- Nuckols -at- mybrighthouse -dot- com>]

Dick Margulis said...
> 
> Hi guys,
> 
> Okay, I'm gonna bite the bullet and spend some bucks with Adobe. Clean
> install, new licenses, no upgrades.
> 
> My laptop came with a licensed copy of Acrobat 6.0 standard. I can
> upgrade that separately to 7.0 Professional for $159.
> 
> CS2 standard is $899.
> 
> CS2 Premium seems to be the identical package except for the addition
of
> GoLive (not sure I'm interested) and Acrobat 7.0 Professional. It
costs
> $1,199.
> 
> I understand that if I get CS2 Professional I can never again upgrade
a
> single application (such as Acrobat) without upgrading the whole
> package. But it seems to me that if I just get CS2 Standard I can
> separately upgrade Acrobat without penalty, right?
> 

Sorry I don't know the answer to the upgrade question. I have used CS2
Pro for about 7 months now (I started with the company about May 1; my
"real" computer with all the hardware and software the manager requested
when they hired me came about 6 weeks later). I've used almost all the
programs in the suite (InDesign and Photoshop more often than any
others), and I was intrigued with the feature that allows one to
"package" InDesign documents for GoLive. Recently I did a short-term
project to assess the feasibility of moving some of our paper-based
documents to the web, and decided I would be smart and play with this
"package for GoLive" feature. Well, I can say it was more fun than
stuffing fiberglass insulation in your underwear, but only marginally.
On the other hand, I've found that writing XML code and creating Style
Sheets in GoLive is fairly straightforward (I haven't done a lot of that
yet--waiting to get my hands on a copy of GoLive CS2
Classroom-in-a-Book). 

> It also seems to me that as long as I'm not interested in GoLive, I
> should just buy the standard CS2 package.
> 
> Am I missing something critical here? Is there something else extra in
> the Professional package that I'm not seeing?
> 

I really don't know what all is in the "regular" CS2 package, but the
Professional version does include the Adobe Bridge, which is supposed to
make it easier to pass elements of documents and files back and forth
between applications, and has this nifty marketing ploy that directs you
to a bunch of stock graphics you can purchase and download from Adobe.

I will say something about having Acrobat Professional--this is the
first job where I've had access to the actual Acrobat program to create
and modify PDF files in their "native" environment. Whenever I have to
package a document for upload to a web space as a PDF, I find the
ability to go directly into Acrobat and manipulate and tune the PDF file
extremely useful. It allows a lot of customization and tweaking that
even other Adobe programs don't allow so you can make your uploaded PDF
a lot more "user-friendly" to the poor schmuck that has to download and
use it at the other end. If you don't already have a full-blown copy of
Acrobat at your disposal, it might be worthwhile getting Acrobat,
whether you decide to go the CS2 Standard or CS2 Professional route.

> Also, am I being too dismissive of GoLive? Now that Adobe bought
> Macromedia, will buying Dreamweaver prove to be a mistake? Should I
look
> at GoLive instead?
> 

I'm certain that Dreamweaver and many of the other popular tools that
people have used for the last few years probably have similar capability
for coding and style sheets. If you already know how to use it there may
not be the learning curve associated with picking up a completely new
tool. In my case, the last time I created web pages on any kind of
regular basis was when teaching consumer-focused basic HTML courses in
the mid-90s when anyone with the sophistication to know the difference
between <br> and <p> tags was considered something of a web guru.

> I need to spend this money in 2005 rather than 2006, so if anyone is
> around who has an opinion, I'd appreciate hearing from you sooner
rather
> than later.
> 

Good luck. Hope this response is somewhat helpful.

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