Talk:Productivity Apps

From School Computing

Web editing software - here at Harker, we are 1:1 but with open platform choice and student/parent owned laptops. We have a required freshman class that does projects aligned with the freshman curriculum to teach basic video editing, web design, and image manipulation. Through this year, we have used the Macromedia Studio Suite as our recommended app set (with alternates permitted with instructor consent - i.e. if the student already owns and is familiar with FrontPage...). Because they are family owned computers, we could not install the software under the Macromedia site license. But I had been able to negotiate a price of less than $170 a copy. Since the student would be using the software intermittently over the next 4 years, we felt this was reasonable.

Adobe's acquisition of Macromedia has changed things significantly. Academic single unit pricing has jumped to close to $300 for Studio 8. I have looked at Nvu and The Gimp as open source alternatives, but Nvu still isn't quite there (IMHO). Adobe Creative Suite pricing is even goofier than Macromedia Studio, and as we are cross platform, FrontPage is out. How is anyone else dealing with this problem?