I am considering buying Adobe Dreamweaver CS3.

I am UK based and if for example I buy it from Amazon in the UK then it will cost me £354.48 but if I buy it from Amazon.com then it will only cost me $398.99.

At today's exchange rate that means I can buy it from the USA for £195.27.

You have to agree that is a huge saving. The first blessing I have found in the exchange rates for a long time.

My question is this. If I buy a US copy of Adobe Dreamweaver CS3 will the DVD be recognised on my PC and will the software run properly?

I have a feeling the software would work perfectly OK here, I don't see how the PC or Software would tell the difference. However, I also have a feeling if you buy this from the US that customs will slap a fee on it as it comes in the country, which may mean you end up spending the same anyway.

I'm not 100% on this subject though so maybe someone else can elaborate...

Originally Posted by D-A-L

I have a feeling the software would work perfectly OK here, I don't see how the PC or Software would tell the difference.

The reason I was concerned is because software comes on DVDs now and you certainly can't run American DVDs on your TV unless you have an expensive DVD which can run the different country formats. I have bought music CDs on several occasions which are not a problem . . . they are amazingly cheap compared to our prices!

However, I also have a feeling if you buy this from the US that customs will slap a fee on it as it comes in the country, which may mean you end up spending the same anyway.

US customs would only be interested in slapping duty on incoming goods. It suits the American economy for my to buy from them. I have not had any problem when I have bought CDs although I have to say there is a big price difference.

If I did get caught for tax it would probably only be UK VAT which at 17.5% would still make the software a lot cheaper.

What I don't want to do is spend the money and find it has been wasted and that I have to spend even more.

You can play Region 1 DVD's (American) on tons of UK purchased DVD players now and if your DVD player is locked to Region 2 (UK) you can have it chipped to cater for all regions very cheaply. PC's are even easier to overide to support multi-region, it's never really been a very effective detterant.

My comments about customs were aimed at the UK not the US. I have had paperwork arrive at work on occasions with a UK customs note saying please pay before collecting your parcel from depot....

As I said I'm not concrete on this stuff, and I am sure you could accomplish what your after but that would be the only grey area I would look into further.

Thanks for that. It was certainly the DVD question that was worrying me. If I have to pay VAT I would still save around £100 on the deal which would be well worth having.

It would be nice to gain from the exchange rate for once as I do quite a bit of my business with States which affects pricing and I also rely on income from Google Ads (which has deteriorated really badly in the last five or six weeks).

going back to the duty of things imported, I ordered some CD's from America as they were cheaper, had different tracks or unavailable here. I got slapped with import duty handling fee plus VAT.

the CD's were only valued at about £30 but it cost me an extra £10 to get them delivered

Yes it's the import duty I was thinking about.

I feel your pain David with Adsense, it's a great exchange rate if your visiting the States from the UK right now but if you get paid by Google in USD then the rate works against you.