Upgrade Eligibility

Good news: Adobe changed its upgrade policy for CS6, and users of CS3 and CS4 will also be able to update to CS6 at a special price, after the release, and until the 31th December 2012: http://www.adobe.com/products/creativesuite/faq/upgrade-policy.html

pletcgm wrote: He said the CDW rep told him that after CS6 is released, Adobe is changing their upgrade eligibility policies that will only allow upgrade pricing for the last version. Is this true?

Yes, it's true and most people think Adobe's timing stinks.

http://www.scottkelby.com/blog/2011/archives/22903

pletcgm wrote: The company I work for has dozens of licenses of adobe CS3 software. We are getting ready to upgrade to CS5.5 before CS6 is released so that we don't lose the upgradeability. I know as of now, you can upgrade if the license is up to 3 back. One of my colleagues just told me he got off the phone with one of our CDW account managers who handles the purchases for us. He said the CDW rep told him that after CS6 is released, Adobe is changing their upgrade eligibility policies that will only allow upgrade pricing for the last version. Is this true?

In fact if you do the math, you will find that upgrades are no better deals than the full versions taking account of the hassle to have old versions pre-installed on the system before the upgrade DVDs would install the new versions.

I prefer to buy full versions but I guess I don't buy all the new versions.  I continue using my existing versions until I feel that there are things I can't do in that version.  In your case CS3 is very old so if you wait for a few months, you can buy CS6 full version.  In the meantime, you can play with beta software or even existing trial versions.

This is my philosophy.

Some time ago, I opened this thread on this:

http://forums.adobe.com/thread/939770?tstart=0

As you can see, it seems there was not much interest on the subject, but perhaps the link I gave may help you to clarify your doubts.