Is this a legit copy of Adobe Creative Suite 5.5?

General Questions
#1

I’ve been using an archaic version of Photoshop and Illustrator and I’m frustrated to the point that I think I’ll buy a slightly out of date version of Adobe Creative Suite (5 or 5.5). I see a couple of listings on eBay that look pretty good.

Adobe Creative Suite 5.0 for $465.

Adobe Creative Suite 5.5 for $650.

This seems like a very reasonable price to me. Are these good prices?

Are these legit non-student (full normal) versions of software?

Is version 5.0 and 5.5 good enough for a hack that is used to using Adobe Illustration 10 and Photoshop 7?

How much better is CS5.5 than CS5?

#2

Sounds suspicious or desperate to me. Adobe is selling CS6 Design and Web Premium licenses for $1899. I can’t imagine CS5.5 licenses would depreciate that quickly.

#3

Food for thought.

People sell academic versions of software all the time. Depending upon the license, but generally speaking, if you acquire academic versions that you are not eligible for legitimately, you are in violation of the license. Just sayin’. Academic versions are the same as full retail versions.

Adobe CS software has a call home “feature.” It automatically contacts Adobe upon installation to verify the serial number. This should not be an issue if the software is still factory sealed and the enclosed serial number is not visible from outside of the sealed package. Otherwise you run a risk someone may have obtained the software from somewhere else and “sold” the visible license number from your copy.

Adobe CS6 is already available.

FWIW, I never buy software from eBay.

#4

At those prices, I’d assume OEM, or, yes, educational versions. The pure pirated versions cost much less, less than $100. At least, it did when I bought CS2 back in the day.

I still do not know how the places selling this stuff can always have such impeccable seller’s ratings, either. Heck, I’m not sure how they can still sell anything–selling software illegally is very much against eBay policy (something I checked before buying CS2).

#5

I ended up managing to figure out how to do what I was trying to do in Photoshop 7 in combination with GIMP. I’m used to the Adobe interface and cannot figure out what is going on in GIMP except for the most rudimentary things. I bought a book on Photoshop 7 from an Amazon used book seller for 1 cent so maybe that will help me out.

I figured something was awry with the eBay vendor, but he does have a very high rating. Would Adobe honor an OEM version if that was what it actually was?