University offers free Adobe software

Last week, students had to buy Adobe products for hundreds of dollars. Now, they’re free.

The University entered into a three-year “Education Enterprise License Agreement” in November which allows students, staff, professors and professors emeritus to download Adobe software from www.iuware.iu.edu, according to the IU Knowledge Base Web site.

The software was made available and announced on Oncourse on Wednesday.
Representatives from University Information Technology Services and Adobe were unavailable Wednesday to discuss terms of the agreement.

Adobe Creative Suite 4 Design Premium and Adobe CS4 Production premium software packages – previously available for the student price of $359.98 at the Computer Connection in the Indiana Memorial Union and for $1,799 and $1,699, respectively, on Adobe’s Web site – are now free.

Both packages contain several programs to produce and manage graphic and multimedia projects.

Senior Brittany Skwierczynski already had Creative Suite 3, but she said pretty soon the whole campus will update. She uses Adobe for designing purposes and said it’s easier to update on and off campus if she has the most recent version.

Skwierczynski said it seems like they come out with a new version every year.
“It’s going to happen that way,” Skwierczynski said.

The IU Knowledge Base Web site also says the software license expires when students, faculty and staff leave the University, and they must delete it then.
But some students already spent a lot of money on the software.

Senior Trevor Gerring said it was “unfair” because it wasn’t advertised. He bought some Adobe products last month with a student discount in the Union. He uses the software for Web and print design.

He said if he’d known it would be available, he would have waited.

Many other students are excited about the announcement.

Junior Becca Murrow said she uses Photoshop for her apparel merchandising classes.
“I saw that you can download it for free, so I probably will,” she said.

Before, Murrow said she just went to the library to work on projects.

She said she wouldn’t have bought it without the discount.

“I don’t use it enough that it’s worth it,” Murrow said.

Freshman Cristina Talucci said she was going to download it as soon as she could.
“I tried to download it this morning, but it kept telling me there is no service,” Talucci said.

She said she’d use the software to edit photos.

Junior Jessica Beckner said she didn’t know about IU’s offer until Wednesday afternoon. After she looked up the software, she said she wasn’t sure what some of it was.

“I don’t know what Cold Fusion is,” Beckner said.

She said she was a little concerned because Adobe could lose money when students take the software and transfer it to other people’s computers.

Beckner also said she was thankful she got a new computer because her old one wouldn’t have been able to support the software.

Even though she would have little school use for it, she said she would download the software, just for fun.

“I’m a history major,” Beckner said. “I have to entertain myself somehow.”