Biting the bullet—CS2

[capezio]

This is my two fold quandry

1. I have to bite the bullet and part with money for a number of reasons and I've decided I need to buy CS2. I look at the Adobe shop and find there are 2 versions CS2 and CS2 standard the latter being more expensive. Which in your considered opinions is the better value for money? Apart from ID v2 I have no software that will run on my new Intel IMAC.

2. In the instance of CS2 (I only looked at these prices) if I look at the UK shop it would cost me £569.88 and can have it shipped in box or downloaded.
If i go to the US shop it will cost me $649 or the equivalent of £343 to download. Obviously on the stength of that the US shop offers best value. Is it that simple?

I have purchased online images/phots in dollars and fonts in euros with my debit card so presumably I can do the same with software or no?

Love to hear your thoughts

[PrintDriver]

You have it backwards. The Standard version is the cheaper of the two.
Standard also doesn't include the Web page stuff or Acrobat.
Go here to see a chart showing what's included in the Pro and Standard packages.
http://www.adobe.com/products/creativesuite
And I see now they are including Dreamweaver in the Pro version. I got gypped!

Edit: you may find you need Acrobat when something goes wrong with a file. Acrobat may open something the original program won't...Happens. I also use it to create excellent pdf files.

[capezio]

The UK store page is really confusing PD I just looked again Unless you know those pop ups are really very non-plussing but if I've looked correctly it still makes it much less in £'s for me to buy in dollars if I can.

https://store2.adobe.com/cfusion/store/index.cfm?store=OLS-UK&view=ols_prod&category=/Applications/Photoshop&NR=0

[Godders]

Are you after the whole suite or just Photoshop?

[capezio]

ID photoshop Illustrator and Acrobat mostly. I don't know anything about web site building and I have a three hour workshop in dreamweaver under me belt is all.

I'm thinking for my needs I only need the lessser version

[PrintDriver]

The lesser version doesn't come with acrobat.

[capezio]

Thanks again PD. I've just been looking again at the web sites and I have got the whole thing completely around my neck. I think I need to start again at the beginning. I started off looking at the whole suite and ended up looking at just photoshop which I didn't realise.

Do you think its good to have acrobat at the moment? I think the only time I would use it would be to create pdf's which I create in ID at present.

[urstwile]

It's cheaper if you buy the Standard version of the suite and then buy Acrobat Pro separately. The Standard version of the suite includes Go-Live, I believe, which you may not need. We did this at work.

Edit: I meant to say that the Pro version contains Go-Live. The Standard does not.

[capezio]

CS2 standard it is for me then...cheers :)