These are your responses to a request in the May 10, 2005, Creativeprose newsletter for information regarding possible upgrades to Adobe Creative Suite 2. I've included responders' names and job information when available.

Not Upgrading
We started with InDesign 1 and have gone with each upgrade. This one [CS2] we intend to skip. We feel that having reached a level of maturity and stability the product now meets most of our needs very well, and due to budget constraints, we will wait for CS3 before upgrading. There are some appealing features, and footnotes are a major one. If they become so pressing we need them, we'll move, but only then. We do a lot of books in InDesign, and if we really needed this feature for a book then we would have to upgrade, but so far we've lived without it.

-- Simon Warner, Publishing Supervisor, Spring Harvest

I have wasted more time on messing with copy protection than I ever gained in vaunted "increased productivity" from a new version. Now that Adobe is adding oppressive remote authentication to the Mac version of CS2, I will not be upgrading.

My firm has had a policy against copy-protected software since a disk crash and restore in the early 1990s permanently disabled an important application and we missed the deadline for an important contract.

I also firmly believe there are ulterior motives involved. Microsoft and Adobe want to move toward term-based licensing. In other words, if you don't pay your annual tax, that remotely activated software stops running. The current moves are directed against their customer base, NOT against pirates and bootleggers! I'll bet that Hotline already has cracks for CS2! The thieves will carry on, but the legit users will be subject to random disruption of work.

The software industry is consolidating and maturing. Whenever an industry does so, innovation stagnates, and the captive customer base is exploited. I'm content to stay in 2004 for many years.

I don't steal software, and I refuse to deal with a company who assumes I'm a thief.

-- Jan Steinman, http://www.Bytesmiths.com/Van

I had a dilemma presented to me a few months back now with the offer of some (occasional) overseas work from an old friend; this was to layout a small booklet with text provided, and was also presented with a choice of two templates to work with: one was in QuarkXPress version 4, while the other was in InDesign CS.

At that stage I owned only InDesign v.2. I found out that I could not open the InDesign CS template, predictable considering a software company's policy of restricting backward compatibility, while the process of converting the Quark document into InDesign v.2 was less than satisfactory, giving me errors.

Thus to accept the job I felt urged to consider upgrading my InDesign to CS version. Deliberating with my friend, he assured me there would be more work in the pipeline to enable me to 'absorb' the cost of the upgrade. My next decision was whether to upgrade just the InDesign component or to upgrade the entire suite... undoubtedly the upgrade cost for the entire suite is a very keenly competitive rate, but since my turnover is still only small, I couldn't justify the outlay on all the programs I owned, to what I saw as yet another big promise for a major overhaul in too short a time period from my previous expenditure. (I have to add that traditionally I have been a designer all too keen to accept the offer of "vital" upgrades to the programs I own, to the point where a good percentage of my income gets re-invested, that is aside from the hardware upgrades deemed 'necessary' to keep a graphic design business going... until my diligent wife/accountant advises me that perhaps I ought to really cut down on "unnecessary" expenses and keep outgoings in proportion to incomings!)

The outcome of all this is that I upgraded to InDesign CS and was a little disappointed at the lack of these promised extras, although I still haven't really explored underneath the hood. It allowed me to open and work on the job for my friend, but as yet hasn't been assured of the additional work he promised.

It seems much of the improved features of a program such as InDesign come as much from the array of possible third-party add-ons that one can get, but obviously at an additional cost, and one is left feeling slightly peeved at the ever-increasing prolificacy that the parent software company deems necessary at releasing these major upgrades. We play a catch-up game with the programs we use, while the essence of design remains the same, based squarely on our creative thought processes. We can often get sidetracked by issues such as these, and the promise that a certain program can "enhance the natural flow of our creative juices through a logically structured piece of software resulting in a seamless act of symbiosis from the brain to the medium" - or other such compelling arguments!

Sometimes the premise, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it" can apply, even in this day and age of relentless modernism.

-- Martyn Foote, Footeprint Design

I seldom, if ever, rush out to purchase the latest gizmo (whether hardware or software) upon release. When the present software I'm running is functioning adequately, and the system on which it runs is quite stable, I'm usually perfectly content to wait until the NEXT version (after the current "latest" release) is announced or shipping before I'll switch to the now obsolete latest version. Why? I've got too much invested in time to relearn the "improved" features, re-arranged menu items (some of which are renamed as well, making it doubly difficult to figure out how to accomplish a function), not to mention the always-present "release 0 bugs", for which first users become the beta testers.

Then there are the nonexistent printed manuals. I absolutely DETEST manuals in PDF format, since my preferred method of using a manual is to sit in bed reviewing new features, flipping pages to any place in the book -- none of which one can do with the electronic versions.

No, I almost always wait until release v.3, .4, or .5 appears before shelling out my money and investing my time in software, no matter how glowing the initial reports.

As for the Adobe products that are the subject of this inquiry, it is a moot point for me until I can afford the money, and even more so the time, to get a new machine and learn a foreign operating system (OS X), one so radically different (and to me frustrating, based on my limited exposure to it at a client's residence, OS X 10.3.9) from OS 9.1 or any earlier Mac OS. Printing problems are the biggest bugaboo I've encountered under OS X, so I intend to wait until OS XI comes out before even considering a new machine, and then I'll get the latest version of OS X (NOT XI).

No apologies to those who want to be on the cutting edge with the latest and greatest. I simply do not have the time or patience to relearn everything.

-- George Morten, Owner, Pandemonium Press

The expense of upgrading will keep me from jumping on the bandwagon for my home computer, but I'm hoping that the University will upgrade right away.

-- Bonnie Elsensohn, Media Specialist, UAS Sitka Campus

To read comments from readers who may upgrade, go to Page 2