CS5 OEM - is this legit or a scam?

[Idontcare]

Looking for CS5 at something less than ridiculous pricing ($600! really?) and google comes back with pages and pages of "CS5 OEM" for sale around $100-$150.

Too good to be true? What's the story on these OEM versions, is it like buying OEM versus Retail Win7?

examples:
http://savings-downloads.com/shop/item/530/

http://www.buysofts.com/products.php?product=Buy-Adobe-Photoshop-CS5-OEM

 

[tcsenter]

Scam:

http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2050621

You *might* do better by acquiring a legit used retail/full copy of Adobe CS4 or CS3 on Ebay or something, then buying the appropriate CS5 UPGRADE. But otherwise, its looking like $600 and up is the range for full legit versions of CS5 (non-academic).

 

[Emulex]

you can always call adobe to verify if they are an authorized reseller. you have to meet pretty serious revenue requirements to sell their product.

 

[Modelworks]

They are selling pirated copies . I know adobe software policies very well and they do not have an OEM version of anything.

The first thing to do with any website like this is do a whois on the site to see who owns it:
http://reports.internic.net/cgi/whois?whois_nic=savings-downloads.com&type=domain

Domain Name: SAVINGS-DOWNLOADS.COM
Registrar: REGTIME LTD.
Whois Server: whois.regtime.net
Referral URL: http://www.webnames.ru
Name Server: NS.NS1DNS.COM
Name Server: NS.NS2DNS.COM
Status: ok
Updated Date: 22-apr-2010
Creation Date: 22-apr-2010
Expiration Date: 22-apr-2011

It is a site owned by someone in Russia, where companies like Adobe have a hard time getting sites removed.

Your second site has a US registrar but when you go to pay it refers you to another site, private-processing.com

Domain Name: PRIVATE-PROCESSING.COM
Registrar: REGTIME LTD.
Whois Server: whois.regtime.net
Referral URL: http://www.webnames.ru
Name Server: NS.NS1DNS.COM
Name Server: NS.NS2DNS.COM
Status: ok
Updated Date: 21-may-2010
Creation Date: 21-may-2010
Expiration Date: 21-may-2011

Same Russian registrar.


Look around at some of the competitors software for alternatives that are much cheaper. There are some really good products out by companies like corel that can do 95% of what cs5 can do.

 

[Idontcare]

Thanks guys for the heads up, and especially for going the distance to teach me (and any other would-be thread readers) how to fish as well as giving me a fish to tide me over.

Yeah I was wondering about the "buy a legit old version and upgrade" route. Definitely merits further investigation.

I currently use Photoshop 6, it does everything for me that I need to do. But what I really like about the CS5 is that content aware fill feature. That is just snazzy. But its not $600 snazzy. You know what I mean?

Its like red-eye reduction, a pretty cool feature and really useful but I'm not about to pay $600 for software that features red-eye reduction (and I don't have to, practically everything has it built-in already).

Would be neat if/when content aware auto-fill becomes everyday. I have no need to for 99% of the features in CS5, but sure could make use of that one feature for cleaning up some of my digital pics of the kids playing in the backyard and so on. Same thing I use red-eye reduction for...but can't justify $600 for such a feature.

 

[bruceb]

Try to get it thru someone you know in a school. Bound to be somewhat less costly but not 100% legal, since you are not the student. But then, how would they know as long as it was bought properly ? ?

 

[Ken g6]

FYI, if you install the resynthesizer plugin in GIMP, you can get similar results. The results are not identical, contrary to what that site says. Its large pattern filling is only moderately good and I doubt it would do things like filling in a background for a stitched desert image very well. But for small-to-medium fixes, it's definitely more than worth the price (free).

 

[BTRY B 529th FA BN]

Yup, I bit the bullet when I bought my full retail version of Adobe Premiere Pro CS4 - going to upgrade to CS5 soon.

GL

 

[Emulex]

honestly the real main advantage i see is 64bit - but this is a problem with 32 bit filters since 32+64 bit dll's do no talk in windows.

 

[Cattykit]

honestly the real main advantage i see is 64bit - but this is a problem with 32 bit filters since 32+64 bit dll's do no talk in windows.

No.
http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?p=29842716#post29842716

 

[scott916]

Try the trial. I wasn't THAT impressed with it.

 

[Emulex]

heck i've been using cuda on tmpgenc for years.that fancy devices that comes on QOSMIO laptops can increase transcoding times far superior to CUDA (which is mostly filter effects).

I forget what toshiba calls it. pretty slick. if you need realtime high quality transcoding both the toshiba PLUS CUDA can pull it off.

i hear folks actually rip tv shows off the air for some reason and share them (?not sure why?) but rather than splicing the show 50/50 they use l33t hardware to pull up real time capture/transcode