C’mon Adobe that makes no sense.

There’s no way I’m spending that much money on CS5 *and* not get my primary development tool (CF Builder) included in the bundle.

Very, very disappointed.

Sure you get an amazing toolkit of applications in any of the CS3 packages you choose (be it Web/Design, Premium or Standard), but the price of entry to the CS3 world is prohibitive to say the least.

Having been developing using the Allaire Macromedia Adobe toolset for over 8 years now I have been lucky enough to not worry about the licensing cost of the tools I have come to rely on like Fireworks, Photoshop and Acrobat etc – the organisations I have worked for have purchased or already owned licenses.

However recently that changed. I desperately needed these applications and didn’t have the luxury of company owned licenses. I felt like I was pulling my hair out getting by without them. So I took the plunge, shelled out my hard earned and bought a license for CS3 Web Premium… and now I’m much more productive I’m happy to say.

I now need my toolset available on my other laptop, and I discovered (very pleasantly) this afternoon that the Adobe CS3 license permits installation on a 2nd PC/laptop for home use. Fan-bloody-tastic! Thank you Adobe!

It’s nice to feel like with all the hard earned sunk into the CS3 license, that I’m actually being thrown a bone by Adobe.

I love Photoshop and Fireworks – they’re amazing tools in their own right – I regard them as “best-of-breed” in their product spaces. Using other image editing tools lately has made me appreciate just how good they are. Acrobat is just starting to come into its own as a genuine development platform and I don’t use Dreamweaver – hate it in fact.

So sure you get a lot of kit with CS3. But am I wrong in thinking Adobe software is expensive?