OEM Photoshop/Illustrator

Hello everyone... It's been a while but it feels great to be back. Anyways, I just sold my Power Mac G4 a few months ago and bought a PC. And a few months before that, I purchased both Photoshop and Illustrator. $1250 in software can put burn significant hole in a college student's pocket, so I'm looking to buy Photoshop/Illustrator CS for as little as possible. I've been researching the whole OEM thing, but it seems suspicious. www.industrycds.com particularly caught my eye ($200 for both! HA!) but after looking them up, I guess it's an illegal operation out of China. I have read that you actually DO get your software, its just fake. That doesn't really do me much good, I don't want "fake" software. So, I guess I'm asking if anyone knows a reputable place to purchase OEM software for the least $$$... my finances are next to none and I don't want to take a loan out to buy software :P haha. Thanks!

Look in the back of PCWorld magazines. They usually have ads for cheap Adobe software.

the current bundle deals from adobe are SWEET. you can get photoshop, indesign, and illustrator for like $999. not cheap i know, but that is cheap. if that makes sense

chris

Photoshop has NEVER shipped as OEM with any product (scanner, camera, etc)...not for MANY years, anyway. Also, anyone who breaks apart CS Suite packages, and sells the products individually is doing so illegally.

You could have converted your Mac licenses to Winders licenses with a call to Adobe customer service. It involves signing some agreements and fully trashing all vestiges of old versions on your old machine. The fee would have been small. Ask Pank, I think he went through this procedure.

All of those places that claim to sell OEM versions (no packaging, no manuals, just a shrink-wrapped disk) are pirates. Run away, fast, and report them to [email]piracy@adobe.com[/email].

Yea, thanks guys. Looks like I have two options: A) Suck it up, wait for my first 137 paychecks, save them, and buy it, or B) Beg for a loan from my parents. Is CS quite an improvement over 7 and 10? I guess another option would be to just buy 7 and 10 for cheaper on ebay. But I want CS :o ... the front of the box looks sweeet haha.

I can buy the Creative Suite bundle for $379.95 through an education reseller. Think I'm going to do that. Has anyone used Streamline? If so, is it nice?

I still use PS7, but I have heard CS is great if you are dealing with lots of photos because of the new file manager.

I've used 7 and cs at school and if money's really important to you, then just get 7 for cheaper. Of course CS is better but it's not worth the extra money. Same goes with illustrator. The new features are nice but not really needed, in most cases.

Streamline is good in a limited field. Sadly Adobe hasnt felt the need to upgrade it in the last 8yrs.

You could buy older versions - I bought a package including Illustrator9, PS6, Acrobat4, and InDesign1 for 250$ - all legal from a Mac outlet (they have windows versions too)