Many software distributors offer discounts for students. These are usually quite significant. Some times these are special "Educational" versions of the software. Usually these have all of the same features, but they may have limitations in their license that they are not to be used for commercial work. Some times they may even tag saved files so that you can't pass them off as being from the normal commercial version of the program. Regardless, these are such a savings opportunity, no students should pay full price for productivity software. Normally you will need to show some sort of proof you are a student (a copy of an ID or an official schedule), and/or you will need to sign a license agreement with the software publisher. Savings are quite significant, some times over 90% off the retail price! Seriously, I've seen $3200 software for under $200! There are a few ways to find these deals. One is to go to the web site of a company that specializes in software for education, such as JourneyEd.com . They are actually one of my school's main vendors, and have been kind enough to set up a special store specifically for students of The Art Institutes at http://www.aistudentstore.com.

Another good way is to just search google.com with either the phrase "educational discount" or "student discount", and the name of whatever software you are looking for.