By Joe Wilcox, Betanews
Today, I received Amazon e-mail about a one-day sale on Adobe Photoshop Elements 8 -- hey, just $54.99 before a $20 mail-in rebate. What's not to like about that? The landing page listed something else: "Adobe Photoshop Extended CS5 Student and Teacher Edition," which releases on May 25. Whoa, could this be like Microsoft Office Home and Student Edition, with multiple licenses and availability to anyone with enough gumption to claim they're a student of life? Hardly. Adobe's license-key terms are so onerous, I predict there will be higher-than-normal attempted returns of this edition.
But first a history lesson: Microsoft pulled something of a retail coup in autumn 2001 with the $149 Office XP edition for students and teachers. The edition let Microsoft drop the price for consumers without risking business version revenues. What success! As I wrote for CNET News.com in August 2001: "Retailers have sold 300,000 copies of the academic version of Office XP since October, taking in about $43 million in revenue, according to NPDTechworld. By comparison, the full standard version has racked up 121,000 retail sales and the standard upgrade version has sold 100,000 since Office XP's release in May 2001." Something else: Microsoft didn't card buyers at the door so to speak. No one checked (wink, wink) that buyers were students (wink, wink).
Microsoft later formally named the product Office XP Student and Teacher Edition, with three licenses, all for $149. Microsoft renamed the product Home and Student Edition with release of v2007, swapping out Outlook for OneNote. The name change formalized what already had been occurring: Consumers of many types buying the software. Office Home and Student accounts for about 85 percent of the productivity suite's retail sales, according to NPD.
Now Adobe has a Student and Teacher package, for CS5, and available through major retailers. Adobe had previously offered a Student Edition, but Student and Teacher is new with Creative Suite 5. Adobe is extending the price discounts to teachers and faculty as well as students, which is commendable. Discounts are big. Photoshop Extended CS5 Student and Teacher Edition is $199 vs $999 for the regular version. The two products are identical, except for licensing, and that includes commercial use. That's right. Adobe's Student and Teacher licensing allows for commercial use. While Amazon only offers the CS5 version -- for now, anyway -- Adobe will offer Student and Teacher editions across the suite versions.
But there is a nasty catch. Student and Teacher Edition buyers do not receive a license key at time of purchase but afterwards. They must provide identification (usually a school or faculty ID) that shows they in fact qualify for the product. According to Adobe's FAQ:
Proof of eligibility must be submitted to Adobe after purchase in order to receive a serial number and use your Adobe Student and Teacher Edition software...You will have to provide an electronic copy of your proof of eligibility via Web upload using the Web address provided in your Student and Teacher Edition package...You may use a digital camera or scanner to create a copy of your proof of eligibility. Make sure that all documents are legible and true to size. Acceptable formats include JPEG, GIF, BMP, TIFF, and PDF. The file must be no larger than 3MB...It may take up to three business days to receive confirmation of your proof of eligibility and your serial number from Adobe.
Meanwhile, the purchaser must use the product on a 30-day trial basis. No offense to Adobe, but that process makes Microsoft product activation seem pretty benign. Submit an image of a student or faculty ID to get a license key in three days? Stranger -- what next? A new market for fake IDs for CS5 Student and Teacher license verification? Pay $200 for the software, another $20 for a fake ID and that's a savings of 780 bucks; Extended is by no means the most expense CS5 version; there's more savings to be had.
What happens to people who submit identification and are rejected as qualified or fail to read that they must qualify? Big trouble. Most retailers won't accept returns of opened software. The policy is "You open it, you own it." For example, "opened computer software" is on Best Buy's "non-returnable" list. Uh-oh.
Will some consumers make that mistake? Of course, and Microsoft is one reason. Microsoft sold Office Student and Teacher for about six years before switching to the not-so-discernibly-different Home and Student nomenclature. Microsoft's success selling both editions has set consumer expectations. Microsoft gives buyers not one but three license keys. Microsoft doesn't check student or faculty IDs. True, upgrades aren't available for the Office student version, which isn't licensed for commercial use, either. But confusion is confusion, regardless of the reason. Adobe also used a verification scheme for earlier Creative Suite Student editions. The new approach greatly opens up the number of potential customers while using familiar Student and Teacher naming. Many buyers will get caught by Adobe's unexpected verification process.
Adobe should be commended for making discounted student Creative Suite versions available to more people in academia. Features identical to regular CS5 versions and the generous commercial use terms are commendable, too. But Adobe's scheme of providing license keys after purchase, once buyers submit verifying credentials, is cause for confusion and customer dissatisfaction.
Copyright Betanews, Inc. 2010Microsoft - Microsoft Office - Microsoft OneNote - Teacher Edition - Adobe Creative Suite