but you could buy software once and use it for several years, skipping a few versions before upgrade. There are lots of users that don't need latest bells and whistles.
I agree. Inkscape and Gimp do everything I need them to do. The last time I hit a limitation was when I needed Inkscape to create a multi-page document. But that was more than a year ago and I managed without that function.
EDIT: http://www.adobe.com/products/catalog/cs6._sl_id-contentfilt... http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2362428,00.asp