admin | 
02 15th, 2009| 
I am studying and working at the same time. One of the best investment I have made is to buy thinkpad tablet. It saved me from all those papers I have to deal with both in work and school. I don’t even have to buy notebooks and papers anymore. Unfortunately, I deal a lot with PDF files and have to annotate them or write something on it. I cannot afford the ones on the market (e.g. PDF annotator, etc) since most of them cost more than $70. I read that PrimoPDF, which is free, can annotate PDF files using tablet PC but have not been succesful at it. People, please help!! Any suggestions? Any software that you know? I’ve googled everyday and can’t find something. Hope a good soul can help. Thanks in advance.
Software piracy doesn’t hurt the major established players (Microsoft, Adobe, Autodesk c.) as much as it hurts their smaller competitors. If a company wanted to sell an inexpensive photo-editing suite, they would be competing against free pirate copies of Photoshop.
Nobody would ever have to make a singe pirate copy of this inexpensive alternative photo editor, yet the manufacturers would still go out of business due to piracy (of Photoshop).
Adobe and others are tolerating piracy of Photoshop c. in order to put competitors out of business, which is pure anti-competitive behaviour. If it was harder to get away with making pirate copies, then there would be genuine competition and real innovation in the software market.
I’m not trying to justify piracy at all. I don’t use any pirated software myself — In fact, I’m using almost 100% Open Source (except nVidia graphics drivers and Flash).
It’s no loss to Adobe if Fred in the Shed takes a pirate copy of Photoshop, because there’s no way he’d ever buy the real thing: without the opportunity of a pirate copy, he would buy an alternative cheap photo editor that would serve his needs adequately. However, if Fred ever gets a job doing photo editing, and points out that Cheap Pix Editor 2008 is good enough for the company’s needs, then that **is** a lost sale for Adobe.
I think Adobe c. would actually prefer you to be using pirated versions of their products than paid-for versions of competing products.
For the second time, sadloner07, I am NOT trying to defend software piracy! I’m speaking straight out of a camp that is competing directly with pirated software, for crying out loud!
If Fred in the Shed couldn’t get his pirated copy of Photoshop, he would have to use something else. Agreed? But the fact is, there are so many pirate copies of Photoshop kicking around (and so little is being done about them) that there’s almost no good reason to use anything else (unless, like me, you run Linux).
I’m saying that Microsoft, Adobe et al are deliberately allowing piracy of their products in order to squash any competition. When someone makes a pirate copy of Photoshop, as opposed to buying some inexpensive graphics editor — which is what they would most probably do if they could not make pirate copies of Photoshop — it’s the vendors of such inexpensive alternative software who really lose out, more than Adobe.