OK, joke of the day. Adobe is releasing a new version of photoshop, CS3. If you go out and buy this in the states they will charge you the grand total of US$471.90 including local tax. If however you were to go onto that self same site from the UK, you would pay £546.38 including tax and shipping. Now that’s about US$1080. When Adobe were asked to justify the huge cost difference (130% mark-up) they said that it costs more money to do business in Europe because of the number of languages and the different currencies. WTF? The official language of the UK is English! And last I looked, currency conversion wasn’t at 130% costs.

Now it’s well known that Adobe has huge issues with piracy with many (if not all) of its products. They are very good products and they are well liked. They are also industry standards for many places of work and many people. Now perhaps there would be less of an issue with piracy if people could actually afford the software. I know I for one want to buy it… but I’m just never going to if they keep this up. I simply won’t be able to justify the cost. If it cost more like £250 (which is more on par with the exchange rate) then I would be tempted to go online right now and do it….

How can a company of this size not realise that if they stopped trying to make up their profits by pissing people off, they would probably make more money through higher sales.

Actually, perhaps I should hold on to this bombshell of marketing information and save it for the Adobe execs. Maybe they will give me a job… or at least a free copy of CS3.