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Frustrations with Microsoft, and what I believe to be an extreme over-pricing of the latest Adobe suite I made the decision to search for the ultimate open-source designer and web-developers suite of programs.

While you will have to do some ’soul-searching’ to determine whether or not you are ready for such a switch, I made this decision under optimum circumstances. Allow me to explain, my Windows XP box was fine, my Adobe install was fine and functioning well. But some changes in Windows EULA agreement (you know that little box you check without reading?) and Adobe’s skyrocketing prices made me want to bail on the grid.

Now before anyone gets any pre-conceived notions about me being cheap, I want you to know that I don’t mind paying for software if it is good. I bought (out of my own pocket) the entire CS2 suite, I also bought my own copy of Windows XP Professional. In addition, I bought Coffee-Cups color schemer software. I have a pay-subscription to Safari Bookshelf, etc, etc. I love them all, but I am getting nickle-and-dimed to death with this stuff. Going price for the new Adobe CS3? A whopping $2400!! So I saw the writing on the wall. If I want to upgrade, or get better/newer plugins its going to cost me more and more money in the future.

In any other coorperation you depreciate your assets over time, but your investments in such assets usually last longer than 3-5 years, especially your hard assets. In the computer industry that is not the case. To stay current you have to keep dumping more and more money into the tools that you use. Unlike a wrench or a hammer these tools are very, very expensive, and if they are chip or memory hungry applications like Adobe, then you are stuck with making the decision of buying a new high-powered machine just to handle your new fangled tools. It’s time that people get a little smarter with their technology.

So here is the goal for this series. I am going to try and aggregate the most functional and versatile Web Development Series called ‘Crossover: The Journey to Open Source Web Development’. The first title (aside from this one) on the operating system. My overall goal is to make this as easy as possible, so you don’t have to be a computer genius to do the exact same thing as I am doing. Post your comments and questions, and maybe we will take this little journey together.