Luminous Landscape Forum
Raw & Post Processing, Printing => Digital Image Processing => Topic started by: Ray on July 02, 2010, 10:35:27 am
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Having recently returned from a 6 week tour of Europe and Russia, I'm eager to upgrade to Photoshop CS5.
I do a Google search on the best price and find a number of sites advertising ridiculously low prices for full versions of CS5 Extended, as low as $US 110. The rationale is that these are OEM products that are only downloadable. They have no DVD, box or instructions, hence the low price.
This sounds very suspicious to me. If something sounds too good to be true, it usually is.
Are these genuine offers? If not, why isn't someone doing something about it?
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Normally OEM software is only available to equipment manufacturers who have a master agreement with the software developer to bundle the software with the equipment as an OEM version. Each OEM copy would have its own license key. The issue here is whether these license keys are valid and whether the supplier has Adobe's permission to market the product in the way you are finding it. Unless you know for sure in the affirmative for both of these points, I would recommend treating it as suspicious. The corollary question of course is whether Adobe is tracking these sites and trying to get them to desist if indeed they are violating Adobe's copyrights.
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Normally OEM software is only available to equipment manufacturers who have a master agreement with the software developer to bundle the software with the equipment as an OEM version. Each OEM copy would have its own license key. The issue here is whether these license keys are valid and whether the supplier has Adobe's permission to market the product in the way you are finding it. Unless you know for sure in the affirmative for both of these points, I would recommend treating it as suspicious. The corollary question of course is whether Adobe is tracking these sites and trying to get them to desist if indeed they are violating Adobe's copyrights.
Mark,
Thanks for your reply. The following site is offering a full version of CS5 Extended (not even an upgrade) for $109.90. It's in the first few links of a Google search on the first page.
Buy cheap ADOBE PHOTOSHOP CS5 EXTENDED for $109.9 | Original OEM ...
Best Price Photoshop Cs5. Genuine Adobe Photoshop Cs5 Extended from OEM ... Best Price Photoshop Elements. Download Cheap Adobe Photoshop Cs5 Extended Now.
www.xobni.com:8080/buy-Adobe-Photoshop-Cs5.../3567.aspx - Cached
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Having recently returned from a 6 week tour of Europe and Russia, I'm eager to upgrade to Photoshop CS5.
I do a Google search on the best price and find a number of sites advertising ridiculously low prices for full versions of CS5 Extended, as low as $US 110. The rationale is that these are OEM products that are only downloadable. They have no DVD, box or instructions, hence the low price.
This sounds very suspicious to me. If something sounds too good to be true, it usually is.
Are these genuine offers? If not, why isn't someone doing something about it?
You are right to be skeptical, Ray. And it is very difficult to police offers made on the web. I don't like to throw money away either, so my policy is to buy only from outfits that I know or that have a substantial number of good reviews available. In general, if a price is significantly lower than what B&H advertises, then I'll look elsewhere.
After my first version of PS (I think it was PS 5), I have always gotten the download versions. I get it quicker, and I've never found the printed documentation very useful. Better to get a LuLa video or do a couple of tutorials on someplace like Lynda.com. Of course I save my own copy of installation files in a safe place so I have them if I need to reinstall.
Good luck!
Eric
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Mark,
Thanks for your reply. The following site is offering a full version of CS5 Extended (not even an upgrade) for $109.90. It's in the first few links of a Google search on the first page.
There is something fishy going on here. I could not open the URL you posted, but I went to the root http://www.xobni.com/about/ (http://www.xobni.com/about/) and I see it is a completely different kind of company. I'd be very careful. and do as Eric suggests.
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Thanks! I'll pay the more expensive price for the upgrade from a local supplier. But I still think it's very bizarre that Google is giving coverage on its first page of a search to what appears to be a complete scam.
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I got into their website from the same kind of Google search you did. While the address on the Google search is for XOBNI, there is a re-direct to Royal-OEM. They have a banner line identifying their certifications with Micrisoft, Adobe etc, etc. Still something fishy about it - why would Adobe be certifying a company undercutting themselves?
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Many OEM software packages only come with the reseller's support, so you might get limited or no support, and upgrade path is questionable. That's if the offer is legit, which is a big if.
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Surely those offers must be for illegally copied software.
Even to amuse myself I would never click such links -- there's no way to know what might be lurking on one of those web sites.
A guess about why someone isn't doing something about it. Surely they're trying. But even wealthy software companies must find the anti-piracy investigations daunting. Software pirates are all over the world and can easily move around. Piracy also plagues the music industry. I happened to see a video made by a Brazilian musician concerned that his style of music is dying out. The video includes images of street vendors with bins full of illegally copied music CDs. These sales take place daily right out in the open -- nobody stops them. Record companies can no longer make the profits they require due to extensive piracy of some kinds of CDs. For this reason, he says, they are ever less willing to pay composers and performers for their work. He believes his entire genre of music is seriously at risk, for sheer lack of income. What a tragedy that would be. It's wonderful music.
Years ago someone I know gave me his (boxed but no longer shrink-wrapped) copy of a major software product. I didn't bother with a sanctimonious lecture, but I never took the CD out of the box. The irony: at the time he was a manager at a software company.
Some years later he and a friend launched a small music business, making field recordings of certain ethnic music. They traveled to far-away places to get their records, worked their fingers to the bone on the projects, and eventually released some excellent and award-winning CDs. It didn't take long for pirated copies of the music to begin appearing on the streets and even on one of the major "e-tail" sites. There is little he and his partner can do to stop this. They just don't have the time or money to track down and deal with the copyright violators. Hard way to learn a lesson about distributing copyrighted material illegally. I hope he did learn it. Some other friends are sort of cavalier about this sort of thing. When they're on the verge of a business trip to Asia, it's: "Hey, you guys want us to bring you back some movies on DVD? They're only a dollar and a half or something."
No thanks.
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…XOBNI, there is a re-direct to Royal-OEM.…
Looks like some naive customers already wasted money there: http://www.blurtit.com/q6665284.html (http://www.blurtit.com/q6665284.html)
Royal-OEM.com seems to be based in Moldova! ( http://toolbar.netcraft.com/site_report?ur...w.royal-oem.com (http://toolbar.netcraft.com/site_report?url=http://www.royal-oem.com) )
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Surely those offers must be for illegally copied software.
Even to amuse myself I would never click such links -- there's no way to know what might be lurking on one of those web sites.
A guess about why someone isn't doing something about it. Surely they're trying. But even wealthy software companies must find the anti-piracy investigations daunting. Software pirates are all over the world and can easily move around. Piracy also plagues the music industry. I happened to see a video made by a Brazilian musician concerned that his style of music is dying out. The video includes images of street vendors with bins full of illegally copied music CDs. These sales take place daily right out in the open -- nobody stops them. Record companies can no longer make the profits they require due to extensive piracy of some kinds of CDs. For this reason, he says, they are ever less willing to pay composers and performers for their work. He believes his entire genre of music is seriously at risk, for sheer lack of income. What a tragedy that would be. It's wonderful music.
Years ago someone I know gave me his (boxed but no longer shrink-wrapped) copy of a major software product. I didn't bother with a sanctimonious lecture, but I never took the CD out of the box. The irony: at the time he was a manager at a software company.
Some years later he and a friend launched a small music business, making field recordings of certain ethnic music. They traveled to far-away places to get their records, worked their fingers to the bone on the projects, and eventually released some excellent and award-winning CDs. It didn't take long for pirated copies of the music to begin appearing on the streets and even on one of the major "e-tail" sites. There is little he and his partner can do to stop this. They just don't have the time or money to track down and deal with the copyright violators. Hard way to learn a lesson about distributing copyrighted material illegally. I hope he did learn it. Some other friends are sort of cavalier about this sort of thing. When they're on the verge of a business trip to Asia, it's: "Hey, you guys want us to bring you back some movies on DVD? They're only a dollar and a half or something."
No thanks.
I'm thinking the same. They must be scams or illegal copies. But what disturbs me, and what I think is disgraceful is that on the first page of a Google search (Australia) I find the following websites, all offering PS5 Extended, full version (not even an upgrade), for around US$110.
groups.filestube.com/topic/1,7846583ac3240bbf,view.html
www.xobni.com:8080/buy-Adobe-Photoshop-Cs5.../3567.aspx
www.nkeconwatch.com:8080/index.6393.php
www.nkeconwatch.com:8080/index.6393.php
narcosphere.narconews.com:8080/.../buy-Adobe-Photoshop-Cs5-Extended.php
fayhoo.com/products/Buy-Adobe-Photoshop-CS5-Extended.html
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But what disturbs me, and what I think is disgraceful is that on the first page of a Google search (Australia) I find the following websites, all offering PS5 Extended, full version (not even an upgrade), for around US$110.
The friends whose music CDs are being sold illegally on the major online retailer's site (referred to earlier), find it especially galling that the pirate vendor (which "rents space" from the online retail site) continues to put forth the lie that one of the titles is "discontinued by the manufacturer." The disinformation makes it appear that the pirate vendor's on-line shop is maybe the only place where you can buy the product.
The friends have complained to the on-line retailer -- which has consistently ignored their communications. Nice.
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Many OEM software packages only come with the reseller's support, so you might get limited or no support, and upgrade path is questionable. That's if the offer is legit, which is a big if.
Adobe doesn't offer any of their products as OEM products. They used to in the early 1990's. My first Photoshop serial came with a scanner. Adobe quit doing OEM over 10 years ago...so any place claiming they are selling "OEM Photoshop" for ANY price is in fact a bootlegger and the transaction is illegal. The question you gotta ask yourself, do you want to give a crook your credit card number? I wouldn't...
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The question you gotta ask yourself, do you want to give a crook your credit card number? I wouldn't...
That's a good point, Jeff.
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That's a good point, Jeff.
The reason why some are cheaper is that they are offered for sale in an overseas company and VAT and shipping is added on - at least in Great Britain - thus the bargain isn't always a bargain?
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You can report suspect sites to "piracy AT adobe . com" and they can always help you to confirm if it's a legitimate site or not.
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I'm thinking the same. They must be scams or illegal copies. But what disturbs me, and what I think is disgraceful is that on the first page of a Google search (Australia) I find the following websites, all offering PS5 Extended, full version (not even an upgrade), for around US$110.
groups.filestube.com/topic/1,7846583ac3240bbf,view.html
www.xobni.com:8080/buy-Adobe-Photoshop-Cs5.../3567.aspx
www.nkeconwatch.com:8080/index.6393.php
www.nkeconwatch.com:8080/index.6393.php
narcosphere.narconews.com:8080/.../buy-Adobe-Photoshop-Cs5-Extended.php
fayhoo.com/products/Buy-Adobe-Photoshop-CS5-Extended.html
All those links look very suspicious, seems like someone has bee hacking other sites to point to his own domain.
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All those links look very suspicious, seems like someone has bee hacking other sites to point to his own domain.
This is exactly what's happening here!
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I think Jeff Schewe's response in Post #13 is definitive on this issue. With Adobe having NO OEM option, I'd keep away from anyone offering it, period.
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I thought that Adobe still had OEM versions of all their software? Why discuss it in the manner that they do here if it doesn't exist? Why wouldn't Adobe state "Adobe doesn't have any OEM versions of its' software"? Certainly they aren't concerned with 10 year old versions?
http://www.adobe.com/aboutadobe/antipiracy...cy_faq.html#oem (http://www.adobe.com/aboutadobe/antipiracy/piracy_faq.html#oem)
http://blogs.adobe.com/jnack/2007/09/save_..._lightroom.html (http://blogs.adobe.com/jnack/2007/09/save_up_to_150_buying_photoshop_lightroom.html)
http://www.adobe.com/special/photoshop/tra...rackingid=EUSXK (http://www.adobe.com/special/photoshop/training/?trackingid=EUSXK)
I know they still do the educational discounts cause that's how I got mine
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I purchased Acrobat Pro some time back from Ebay, and it worked fine with a few updates for a few months.
Then Adobe caught on with these illegal copies, and my license was no longer good.
The copy was from EBAY from a 70+ positive feedback seller. I paid over $120 for it. the sw came in a very professional OEM looking Adobe box and everything.
I usually buy direct from Adobe, and they keep the file in your account for DLs. But this looked really good :-)
You said it...if the deal is too good to be true....