Build Your Own Adobe Creative Suite with Free and Cheap Software

Let me come clean first...my work computer is a box (Pentium 4/2.60 Ghz 2/1GB ram) and a very wide CRT monitor circa 2000.  It is running Windows XP Pro/Version 2002/Service Pack 3 and sometimes sounds like a Soviet-built Lada, but it does and has everything I need. I guess that makes me a tad OCD, part Spartan and slightly a Luddite. Yes, this is it below...please be kind.

I have been using Macromedia Fireworks and Flash 8 for ages.  A couple of years ago I purchased Adobe CS6 for my 2011 Windows 7 home computer.  Now it may be time for me to get a new work computer and I am fretting that I will be losing all the applications I know like the familiar chair in my den.  I was thinking about subscribing to Adobe Creative Cloud but for the price and what I do with it, I do not think it is worth it. So I went looking for alternatives. 

I have two sources I would like to share (and thank them for publishing); Thorin Klosowski's October 2014 posting on this subject and a list published by North Carolina State University's Technology Department.  If I'm giving NC State props,it must be a big deal...


GO TAR HEELS! :-)