Layout Program Price

[pogre]

I have a pair of questions for you:

1st - Why would Adobe's InDesign 2.0 be cheaper than PageMaker and FrameMaker? I thought InDesign was the latest and greatest?

Here is where my question comes from.

2nd - I have a guy who used to layout products with Quark for a living. Quark is out of my budget. What would his learning curve be for InDesign? Steep, no problem, or something in between?

 

[Fast Learner]

Answers:

1st - Adobe is trying to make InDesign the standard for page layout, so they are temporarily trying to make it more reasonably priced to get people to buy it. (That price seems awfully good though... if it's legit it's a great deal indeed.)

2nd - No problem. It's very, very similar to Quark in concept and even uses many of Quark's shortcuts (if you set it to in your preferences). I was doing 90% of everything I had been in Quark in about 2 hours of playing with InDesign. The other 10% was the more esoteric stuff like trapping and specialized line screen settings. No problem.

 

[aryus]

Not sure if this is something you'd be interested in, but if price is important, take a look at Serif's PagePlus 9. Great program for $129. Outputs to PDF, although it may be a problem if you're sending other file types to a printer.

Hope this helps,
Martin

 

[Dimwhit]

I think Fast Learner has it right. Although as far as I know, the price for InDesign is there for good. But the price on the site you listed is amazing! Jump on it. I think it's normally $599 or so. Quark is upward of $1000.

As for the learning curve, it's nothing. I had used Quark for years. The day I switched to ID was the last day I used Quark. Took a couple hours to get all the important stuff.

If you/he have previous experience with other Adobe products, like Photoshop, it makes it that much easier.

 

[JoeGKushner]

Is it possible that these are student editions?

 

[Fast Learner]

What makes it slightly "suspicious" (and by that I more mean "maybe it's a mistake" and not "maybe this is illegal") is that the "Upgrade from PageMaker" price is identical to the new price.

 

[TheAuldGrump]

Hmmm, is it an OEM version? That is - does it come with the manual etc.? If so it also may not get the same level of support that the full price version gets. Also, if it is OEM I have actually seen even lower prices than that... (As low as $50... I can't say I wasn't tempted...)

Hmmm, going by the site it's the full version... weird.

I got Serif PagePlus 8 off of the Serif site for $10 when they updated to 9.

The Auld Grump

 

[GiantInThePlayground]

I've been a Quark professional for years, and I learned InDesign all-but-immediately when I finally got the chance to use it. It's even easier if you know Illustrator or Photoshop well. In fact, here's the best praise I can give it: I use Quark at my current day job and InDesign at home on freelance work and my brain does not explode when I switch between them.

 

[pogre]

Really helpful folks - thank you!