I have to congratulate you on one of the most incomprehensible posts I have ever seen.

I have a Lacie 320 which works well and pivots. Fantastic for working on portrait shots. These monitors definitely need hardware calibration to make the best of them.

This monitor is very easy on the eyes as John mentions about these types. One of the things about them is that being designed for graphics, they do not exhibit the excessive brightness of many monitors, relying on a wide palette and good dynamic range for their quality and I think that is probably what makes them unfatiguing to use.

The standard zoom is much better than its price would suggest and stopped down to f8 is hard to better no matter what you pay.

Since most people have no opportunity to compare lenses personally before buying them, published tests are very important.

The published tests from respected sites and magazines are quite definitive but always people with an emotional attachment to a marque will see any criticism of their chosen make or it being judged less than the best as a personal slight.

Others argue that manufacturing variations account for poor performance of a given lens - which makes lens buying a matter of a pig in a poke. Personally, I feel that if a makers QC is so poor, I probably wouldn't buy one of theirs anyway.

In the end, the tests are all we have.

Perhaps you are trying to appeal to Arab viewers, John? These things are more cultural than right or wrong, are they not?

Under EU rules they have to honour warranty within the community and you do not have to fill in anything to activate that warranty, it comes with the buying of it.

Speaking as someone who bought a K5 with the sensor problem and was fobbed off until I threatened small claims court action, I will not be buying further Pentax product, happy as I am with the K5.

Once bitten twice shy in my case, I am afraid.

No, but you are still thinking of the initial flurry of sales. In five years time someone will be using the picture for different reasons. Let's say the celeb in the pic has been given a prize for services to fashion. Vogue wants to use it across a spread. They need it also for a promo poster. If it is shot on a small sensor camera, the quality will not look good at poster size. Someone will have that shot or a similar one that will make the quality they need, so they buy that one.

These are simply hard business decisions, nothing to with photography at all.

I'll give an example, one of my all time best selling pix is the last one ever taken of The Who all together before Keith Moon died. I shot it on my Hasselblad. That shot has been used over and over all over the world. The quality is such that you can use it for a poster at 6ft tall. If I'd shot it on 35mm, then a poster would still be possible, just. But why would someone buy it if there was a similar shot at 6x6 quality.

In the end, there is no argument against shooting at the best possible quality for maximising future sales. Like I say, nothing to do with photography, just a business decision.

Exactly.

Soligor used to do a similar lens but they were less honest in their advertising.

You are being offered the CS extended bundle I believe. Unless you are a professional illustrator or designer the extra programs probably aren't much use to you since each one is as complex as Photoshop itself.

If your friend is upgrading, his license doesn't not entitle him to sell the CS4 I believe and it is likely that Adobe will block it from security patches and updates when the serial number crops up on their servers.

Personally, I'd check with Adobe. After all, if your friend has upgraded from this serial number, you will not be allowed to if or when you want to upgrade, so you'd have to buy the full product anyway.

I agree with John. Why not have a look at your friend's CS4 in use and see if it adds anything you need to PS7? I started off on the earliest versions on the Mac and great program the CS versions are, I don't think there's much more that I need nowadays than even that PS1 or whatever it was would do.