Who says they are making a profit ??
If you were sitting on this side of the pond, then you might be a little more understanding towards the feelings of non-USA supporters of this product. Actually, I suspect there are a lot more of those than one might think. If they all refused to pay the inflated price over here, then
you might end up paying twice as much as now, in order to maintain Adobe's profit margin.
Well here at my side of the pond, in order to have a computer that is compatible with AA3, I had to shell out about $7-800 plus a lot of time doing homework and putting it all together..... the $99 Adobe fee was hardly anything compared to that. But it was an extra expense I had to pay out to get up and running with AA3. My alternative was to get up and running with M-Powered ProTools for the midi. I already have Sonar, but wanted something different. Next week I have to get another Vista compatible midi interface of some sort to get completely up and running, so there's another expense.
I have no clue on why Adobe charges different rates.