Do you know about the University of Alberta Microstore?  This is the place to get student priced software and hardware.

 

Are you savvy with graphics and design?  One of the best software deals a student can get is an Adobe Design Creative Suite Software package.

 

For example, the Adobe Design Premium package costs $399 with education pricing (Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, Acrobat X Pro, Dreamweaver, etc.). But the regular price of this package is US$1899.

 

To buy only Acrobat X Pro from the Microstore costs $75.  Why would you buy this software?  Acrobat Pro is Acrobat Reader but with a lot more functionality, such as writing sticky notes, replacing text, highlighting text, printing to PDF, inserting and deleting pages, fillable forms, OCR text recognition and security options.

 

But of course there are all sorts of free open source tools out there that may offer similar features if you are willing search them out!