Getting around extortionate software pricing in Australia
May 30, 2011 6:00 PM   Subscribe

Can an Aussie buy Adobe LightRoom (boxed) from USA and install - and subsequently upgrade - on an 'Australian' computer?

Amazon.com has Adobe Lightroom on sale today for US$119. The same software costs nearly four times that in Australia. I'd like to "do the right thing" and buy LR, but I object to the prices inflicted on Australians for a piece of downloadable software that I never expect to require any support for.

Anyone know whether I could get the box sent to a friend in the US (Amazon won't send outside US) and then either:
  1. Get my friend to simply email me the licence code, and use that on a trial copy downloaded from Adobe
  2. Failing that, get them to send me the CD
and end up with a working – and at least semi-legal – copy of LR?

Bonus points: What would happen when LR4 came out? Could I upgrade? And would I be charged the US or Australian upgrade price?

_______

iMac running OSX 10.6
posted by puffmoike to Computers & Internet (3 answers total)
 
Best answer: I am pretty close to positive that you can just install the trial of LR right now and when the serial number arrives (to a US friend), enter it in. Voila, you have a working copy of LR.

Since Adobe seems to provide a working copy of their software for trial, I don't see why you couldn't do this with any future upgrade as well.

I have no experience with US vs AUS software control by Adobe and wasn't aware that there was any. It may only affect support issues.
posted by qwip at 7:02 PM on May 30, 2011


I can't see any reason it wouldn't work. I (Australian) have bought heaps of software from the US, although all downloaded, not boxed.

It's not like there's an "Australian Edition" of any software as far as I know, and region encoding shouldn't be an issue for software.
posted by Diag at 7:45 PM on May 30, 2011


Response by poster: For anyone stumbling across this old thread, it worked…
posted by puffmoike at 2:44 PM on November 13, 2011


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