[UPDATE (April 29th) – Creative Suite 5 is now shipping!]
[UPDATE (April 16th) – We’ve put together new estimates on likely CS5 shipping timeframes, plus information on Adobe’s “free upgrade” grace period for CS4.]
When will Adobe Creative Suite 5 be released? That seems to be a big question of the season… Now that it’s March, let’s take another look. If you search the Adobe site for CS5, you’ll find some good tidbits, particularly about Flash Pro CS5 and Photoshop CS5, but little that’s concrete on timing.
But if you look to coverage of a financial conference the CEO spoke at last week, the Wall Street Journal writes: “CS5 is slated for release in April, though Narayen wouldn’t comment on a release time frame at the conference. Narayen said Adobe will ship its new version of Flash around the same time as CS5, in the first half of this year. ‘Data points and reviews point to a really solid release’ of CS5, he said.”
So it sounds like at this point there is still no official date from the company, but the financial community (whose jobs depend on researching this type of info) is expecting it to be available in the mid-spring. And if it were to come three years after the CS3 release, and eighteen months after CS4, then it would be in the second half of April – so with any luck, not too much longer to wait…
What’s more, Adobe has historically offered a “grace period” of sorts with major product releases, wherein if you buy the current version within a certain window of the new release, you can get the current software now plus a free upgrade to the new version when it comes out. Meaning quite possibly, you could buy a CS4 product and then get CS5 later at no additional cost…
We’ll have more specifics on that program here as the CS5 release date approaches, plus full coverage of launch details, so stay tuned.
More Adobe Buzz info, just launched today:
https://prodesigntools.com/blogs/digitalmedia/2010/03/the_countdown_has_started/
This concurs with a rumor I heard elsewhere, that it will be April 21 or 22.
That strengthens the case, so hopefully it all adds up to soon.
What’s wrong with CS4…?
I love to use all of them, so, I will wait CS8. ;)
Regards,
Jeanlou
@Jeanlou, good point. We have CS4 here too (Web Premium), and also like it a lot… I think the point on upgrading varies based on your situation, depending on how much time you can save, or make your job easier.
I kind of look at it this way – even if it costs a few hundred dollars, if upgrading to CS5 gains me hours in productivity on a recurring basis, I figure it’s worth it… I can accomplish and/or bill out that much more.
There was actually a fairly interesting study about that recently:
http://pfeifferreport.com/CS4_Productivity_DesignProfessionals.pdf