I hate to be the voice of dissent, but if I were you I'd use the money to get a Mac for the computer and then Aperture II for photo editing and Photomatix in the event that you feel like doing HDR stuff. If you feel you really need the Adobe stuff you can always spend the bucks on the Creative Suite later on. however, I find that the Aperture/Photmatix combo does everything I need and the added peace-of-mind that comes with using a Mac is very much worth the extra money up front.





Then again, if you really want to go for the hard-core route, it is possible to make Adobe programs play nicely with Linux, but you're in for some late nights and lots of swearing if you go that route.