From: Fornaciari, Dr. Charles [mailto:
cfornaci@fgcu.edu]
Charlie and all,
Perhaps the best place to start is with your campus bookstore---they usually
have a selection of the basic academic software: Adobe, Microsoft,
Macromedia, and Symantec products are typically the most popular. Many other
online or mail order retailers also sell academic software, but they
typically don't advertise it. As a result, with a little bit of work you can
do some comparison shopping on academic pricing as well, but the price
spread is typically very small, but be careful of shipping cost
differentials! You also want to be careful of two things.
First, make sure that the software is fully functional. A few companies will
sell academic software that is feature limited compared to its full price
siblings, but luckily, that practice has died down quite a bit over the past
4-5 years. Some products will still identify themselves as educational
versions in their splash screens upon installation (Macromedia and Adobe
products come to mind), but this typcially does nothing to the functionality
of the product.
Second, you want to be careful about pricing in general, especially when it
comes to upgrading from a previous version of the software (almost all
academic software is upgradeable to the new version). Some academic products
are actually more expensive, or have the same prices as their commercial
brethern. This is due to the level of the discount the software publisher
gives to the reseller. For example, academic upgrades of Microsoft Windows
are almost always the same price, or a little higher priced than upgrades to
Windows at a retail outlet (whether physical or Web-based). This is because
retailers almost always discount these products as much as possible
(sometimes to the point of being a loss leader) to draw customers into the
store whereas the academic price is basically fixed (non-pejorative sense of
the word). The opposite applies to the Microsoft Office Suite. It's almost
always less expensive to buy a new academic version of Office than it is to
upgrade from your previous edition. Adobe is somewaht schizophrenic (sp?) in
their pricing. Upgrading to Illustrator 9.0 costs about $139.00 from a
previous edition whereas the academic price of a new Illustrator 9.0 is
about $90. Photoshop on the other hand is about $190 to upgrade from a
previous edition and its academic price for a new edition is also around
$200.
Finally, make sure you read the licensing terms very closely. Some companies
insist that you can only use the academically priced software as long as
you're an academic. Others limit the number of times you can purchase the
same academic product within a year, while others place restrictions on
upgrading academic software. Others only care that you're an academic when
you buy the product. A few (EndNote and ReferenceManager come to mind) will
only allow the sale of the product to students.
In general, you can get a lot of _great deals_ with academic software, but
always caveat emptor.
Have a good one,
Charles
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Charles Fornaciari, Ph.D. Department of Management
Assistant Professor of Management College of Business
(941) 590-7384 Florida Gulf Coast University
E-mail:
cfornaci@fgcu.edu 10501 FGCU Blvd. South
http://opal.fgcu.edu/cfornaci Ft. Myers, FL 33965-6565
"He who would do good to another must do it in Minute Particulars. General
Good is the plea of the scoundrel, hypocrite, and flatterer. " William Blake