Just about to buy myself the Lightroom 2 educational version.  Just wanted to know if it allows for commercial work.  Does it even matter?

It may be in breach of their 'rules' but if you look at it this way, if lets say I wasn't going to buy the educational version or the full retail because it was too expensive and I go and grab a very good, usable version from a torrent, then they lose out entirely.

That said, I'll be honest and say that I've done that with Photoshop before and I am not pleased with certain aspects such as no available new patches and there's no support for the product either.  In the end, Bridge ends up doing funny things and there's nothing I can do about it.  I want to buy a program legitimately this time around and take advantage of the educational discount.  Does the Lightroom version do anything to the files if the user agreement indeed doesn't allow for commercial work?

Exactly, thats why I'm going to start paying for any software.  I was stupid and paid for Vista too

Well, Im pretty satisfied with my CS2 but ONLY because Adobe is not able to keep their ACR independent on PS version, I must upgrade to CS3 which is able to open RAWs from my new camera. This really pi**ed me off. Either I do upgrade to CS3 or I have to put another step (new program to decode RAWs) into my workflow. However except this pretty stupid situation Im big fan of Adobe.

The other thing I dont understand is why PS costs more in eastern Europe then in US while average income does behave excatly opposite? It means you earn less so we want you to pay more?! That of course force many ppl to steal it, cause many of us are not going to pay their 4 months salary for PS licence. Of course there are other solutions, but we all know why ppl want PS and not eg. Gimp.