If you can find a way to register for student-dom the MS Office, and indeed Adobe become much, much cheaper.

I'm no fan of Office-for-Windows, but have managed to reach some kind of truce with Office X; which is handy. But as opposed to the 80 squillion quid it is to buy retail, I can get the educational price of 17 quid as a nurse. :-)

So if you can find a way to be registered somewhere for some kind of course (you'll have to check what applies in the US) then that may be cheaper than buying it full-retail.