ADobe bundle upgrades

Well, as I posted on another thread, the Intuos Lightroom3 bundle was $399, then you can upgrade the Elements9 that comes free, to CS5 for $299. It gets me that the average tax paying, hardworking Joe or Jane has to pay such a huge premium over the academic versions.

One of the issues that I see is that the full blown version of Photoshop was never designed or targeted at the hardworking Joe or Jane. It was always something that large design companies or similar that were the target audience of Photoshop. Along comes digital imaging that Jane or Joe can readily afford to get into but they also want the high end image editing suite. There are alternatives to the full blown version and perhaps that is what those people have to move to. This could be a boon to things link GIMP, PSP, etc. It would be nice if Adobe gave a grace period from now until when CS6 is released so that those that use CS3 or CS4 could get themselves moved up to CS5. I won't repeat everything that I put in this response in the other active thread on this subject. If people want to effect a change to this policy it is better to write to Adobe directly and not only vent on forum boards. I have always stayed current so the policy has a lessening effect on my personally but I do feel for those that felt upgrading every two or three versions was sufficient. It will be interesting to see if they do anything to the way Lightroom is handled for upgrading.