Abstract:

Adobe Master Suite CS3 is bloatware, works poorly, and is rather painful to use.

Method:

I installed Photoshop CS3, Illustrator CS3, and Acrobat 8 on a Dell Optiplex 745 tower with a Core 2 Duo E6300, 2 GB RAM, 74 GB Raptor SATA disk.  Windows Vista Ultimate x64.  nVidia 8500GT/512 MB.

Results:

Disk space required: 2.5 GB.  Computer rebooted twice.  Acrobat refused to start immediately after install.

Additional metrics may be collected at a future time.

Discussion:

Acrobat is difficult to use.  Photoshop takes forever to start.  A free PDF viewer from Foxit Software loads in a fraction of the time, and opens PDFs far better than a really expensive product.  Office 2007 is able to save directly to PDF.

Paint.NET satisfies my basic image editing needs.

Why do I need this bloated suite of applications that runs slowly, has a poor user interface, and is constantly being patched and requires more maintenance time than Sun Java?

Conclusion:

I wouldn't pay for this.  I won't even use it unless I had no choice.  I'd rather spend my money elsewhere if I ever needed to edit PDF documents via Foxit's PDF Editor.  This is a farce.

Followup:

Seems I had a visitor who felt the need to insult this "review".  Except, it's not a review.  It's a comment on the bloated nature of the software.

The "professional" solution falls down in very simple tasks.  Not all users need a full PDF editor and creator.  Not all users need a professional graphics tool.  Basic tasks like opening a PDF document are extremely painful (slow).

I'm not the only one:

• Dreamweaver MX 2004 (version when still owned by macromedia) - 127megs
  Dreamweaver 8 (pretty sure still own by macromedia at this release) - 180megs
  Adobe Dreamweaver CS 3 - 1.7 GIGABYTES. (Thats JUST dreamweaver, not PS or anything else...)
  via http://forum.ourdarkskies.com/index.php?showtopic=17757
• C|net says, "we recommend not treading lightly, but instead spending a lot of time playing around with your single-serving Adobe app to make sure you're not better served by a freeware analogue." via http://www.cnet.com.au/software/imaging/0,239035345,339280543,00.htm
• Adobe recognizes the bloat.  And they want to change and fix it.
  http://www.cnet.com.au/software/imaging/0,239035345,339283589,00.htm

I have never discouraged the use of Adobe Photoshop for a professional graphic designer, nor would I necessarily recommend Foxit for creating "complex PDF files".  But, as I wrote, for some "basic image editing needs", Paint.NET is more than sufficient.  For the average web surfer, the ability to open a PDF when they click on a link is all that is necessary.  How many typical users simply want to export documents to PDF format (where Office 2007's built in functionality is more than sufficient)?  How often do these users make "complex PDF documents"?

You be the judge.