Pixiq

We're thinking that this one might be a bit controversial. Adobe has just released Creative Suite 5.5, a paid upgrade that brings mobile authoring tools to the company's platform of creative apps. 

The upgrade starts at $399 for the package of tools the company released less than a year ago. That alone is going to be enough to get some people complaining, especially if Adobe doesn't make bug fixes available for the 5.0 version without upgrading to 5.5. In other words it's possible that if you're using Photoshop 5.0 and some critical bug is fixed you'll need to upgrade to 5.5 before you can apply it. 

It's not unheard of for a company to charge for a .5 release of software, so it's possible Adobe customers will gladly pay for the ability to author content for a variety of mobile devices in their suite. 

Adobe also announced a subscription program for their apps (this has been available in some other countries for a while) allowing users to pay month-to-month or annually. 

Creative Suite 5.5 Web Premium is $135.00 per month on a month-to-month basis and $89 per month if paid for an annual plan. (That's $1620 and $1068 respectively for those without a calculator handy.) The full version of Creative Suite 5.5 Web Premium is $1799, so if you're a glass-half-full type that means that you save around $700 to use CS5.5 before Adobe likely releases a 6.0 (at which time you'd likely just subscribe to the next package).

If you're a glass-half-empty sort it means that you'll  be paying for software that you don't get to keep even when you have paid for it for a full year. (I'm still looking for the terms of service for the subscription and whether you get to unlock the software when you hit the retail price. If someone has found that, please post it in comments.)

This makes the annual plan seem like a pretty poor idea—if Adobe rolls out releases on the same schedule as 5.0 to 5.5 then it will be less than a year before 6.0 comes out, in which case you'd have already paid for a year and be locked into that bill by the time something better comes out. 

What do you think? Is this subscription program worth it? Is it something you'd use? It certainly makes the cost-of-entry lower for accessing Adobe's apps, but is it enough to make you sign up? 

I'm on the fence. I'd personally be thrilled to pay for the apps on a per-use basis. I use Photoshop occasionally but I probably only need GoLive once a year, for a day. Maybe that would make the month-to-month worth it for that application, and just cancel at the end of a month. It's an interesting idea that Adobe has been toying with for years, sound off in the comments. 

The announcement on Adobe's site.