To pay or not to pay

Faced with the high cost of the Adobe suite of products (Photoshop, InDesign, Illustrator, Dreamweaver etc.) we have been discussing the pros and cons of rolling out free or open source alternatives. Amongst many other articles I recently read this article on interface magazine which is a good primer on some of the good bad and the ugly. I am torn really. The rebellious, anti-establishment side of me loves the idea of software that is developed "by the community, for the community", and did I mention IT'S FREE! (well sort of...). However, the conservative network manager side of me has always been disappointed by the lack of polish on all of the alternatives I have tried. An example would be trying to use Kompozer as an alternative to Dreamweaver last term. It worked, but managing it in a network environment where kids are moving from one machine to another like rabbits was virtually impossible. Every time they moved to a new machine, they had to setup their sites from scratch, and this became (ahem...) a little tiring for them. Dreamweaver. Roll it out via an msi to all machines in a lab, without even visiting said lab. Kids logon, setup site once. Work on any machine and hey presto, it just works (for me and for the kids). Now this is a very small example, but I am writing it because it is typical of the seemingly small, but deal breaking issues that arise when it comes to open source/free alternatives. As a parent, I'd like my kids to be able to use stuff at school that they can use at home (for free), and it seems daft that in these times of breaking down the barriers between home and school using technology, we are considering spending a lot of money on something that for most of our students (unless of course they download a non-legal version) would not be able to run on their home computers. I'm not ready to throw out my Microsoft Servers and Desktops (and to be honest I probably never will be), but maybe I just need to work harder on making some of these alternatives work in my environment..