My grandfather was a master carpenter, he had a saying I've always liked "If you use something for more than an hour a day buy the best you can afford".
I've never minded paying for developer tools as long as I could afford them, lots of professionals spend a lot more than we do on tools/professional development.
Offtopic: I would also urge you if you want to solder not to buy a cheap soldering iron from radioshack, etc. If you don't have the money for a weller or hakko soldering station then at the very least buy a chinese temperature controlled hakko 936 clone. The difference between a crap iron and a decent temperature controlled iron is gigantic.
How did he feel about perpetually renting them? Even if the tool is currently perfect, I don't trust that the company's future plans will align with my future needs; I expect that they'll diverge.
edit: I stand corrected; didn't see the asterisk and the separate page specifying that an active subscription isn't necessary to continue using the current version of the software.
