Adobe’s Back-to-School promotion is live: Save up to 80% on Adobe Student and Teacher Editions, plus get free FedEx shipping… This offer is valid on all Education software products until October 31st in North America, and until November 23rd inter­nationally. Check out the details for this deal below.

Adobe’s Education editions are available for almost all products (CS5, Photoshop, Lightroom, Acrobat, Elements, Captivate, etc), and are just like their standard versions, with only a few differences.

This special is available only on orders made via the Adobe Education Stores to customers in the United States, Canada, Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom. OEM and volume licensing customers are not eligible for this promotion. This free shipping offer is stackable and may be used in conjunction with any other discounts.

We have a new voucher to save $10/€10/£10 on Acrobat Pro or Acrobat Pro Extended (full or upgrades) with coupon code: prodesigntools. Just enter this promotion code after adding the product to your shopping cart at the Adobe Store for the discount to activate.

This special offer is available in the U.S., Canada, U.K., Australia/NZ, and throughout Western Europe – save $10 in the US and Canada; save €10 in France, Germany, Ireland, Belgium, Netherlands, Luxembourg, Austria, Portugal, Spain, Italy and Finland; save £10 in the UK; save A$10 in Australia; save CHF 10 in Switzerland; save DKK 100 in Denmark; save NOK 100 in Norway; and save SEK 100 in Sweden.

This promo code is valid until July 21, 2010, in Adobe Commercial stores only (not Education or Volume).

[UPDATE (April 30th) – CS5 is now shipping!]

As you may have heard, Creative Suite 5 will be launched on April 12 with a big rollout event that Adobe anticipates over 200,000 people to sign up and attend… So we’ll all learn about what’s coming – but we won’t be able to use or download the software yet – for that we have to wait further. But when will that happen? Well, there’s a lot of mis­information and stray guesses out there about when the shipping date(s) will be, so we thought it might be instructive to take a look at exactly how things happened last time for CS4, eighteen months ago…

So here is our analysis on what CS5′s important dates will be, if the CS4 model is followed – although please note these are our own working estimates and not from Adobe:

Confirming this analysis to some extent comes actual word from Adobe, although not widely disseminated… Buried deep inside a transcript of last week’s first-quarter earnings conference call, Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen was quoted as saying in response to an analyst’s question about the availability of CS5:

I know there’s been some confusion about what we mean by “launch” versus what we mean by “ship.” On April 12th, we’ll talk a lot more about the new features and function­alities of the suites, the various product configurations, and what we’ve done with pricing. We have some new products which will factor into the pricing moving forward. And then traditionally, four weeks later or so, you tend to ship the English version followed by the major language versions a few weeks after that. The early feedback has been very positive.

So there you have it – hopefully installing in May. Now the next most commonly-asked question out there is, “if I buy CS4 now, will I get a free upgrade when CS5 ships?” Also known as the Adobe free upgrade “grace period” question… We’ll cover that in a coming article.

[UPDATE (May 6th) – Adobe CS5 French and German versions are now available / Français Maintenant Disponible / Deutsch Jetzt Verfügbar]
[UPDATE (May 10th) – CS5 is now also shipping and downloadable in Japanese, Spanish, Italian, Dutch, Danish, Swedish, Norwegian, Finnish, and Portuguese.]

Adobe has a new voucher code: Use adobe10 to save 10% on all products in the Commercial Store in Europe, from now until March 17th 10th… (Update – Adobe has just notified us this offer was so overly successful that they had to expire it early – our apologies!) The code should be entered at time of checkout to receive the discount in the United Kingdom, Germany, France, and elsewhere in the EU.

Another new offer, valid worldwide, is save $20 (£13/€17) instantly when you purchase Photoshop Elements with Acrobat. This discount is in addition to the existing $20 Mail-in Rebate for Photoshop Elements products. See our quick take on Elements 8 here.

Lastly, Adobe has extended the deal for purchasing multiple copies of Adobe Acrobat – buy four, get one free – until April 23, 2010. So that translates into savings of up to US$449 when you sign up for the easy new online Volume Licensing Program with Adobe Acrobat software. Note that Adobe has just rechristened their volume licensing store to be called the Adobe Business Store, and this offer also works in both North America and Europe.

Were you aware there’s a place you can go anytime 24×7 that will always show you (most of) the latest and up-to-date specials running for Adobe products?

There is. Here is the current special offers page for North America and here it is for the United Kingdom. There’s also pages for Germany and France. More may be coming in the future.

Typical deals are like 10-20-30% off, or anywhere from a $25-$200 discount, or maybe a free book with purchase, depending on what’s running… In recent months there have been coupon savings on the different suite editions, Photoshop, Acrobat, Dreamweaver, Lightroom, Illustrator, InDesign, Flash Pro, and Elements. The promos are always changing, so feel free to check back for updates.