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.

From Popular Mechanics  |  By David Noland   |  October 13, 2007

Flying in a jetliner is extraordinarily safe: There has been only one fatal crash in the United States in the past five years, an astounding record considering that more than 30,000 flights take off every day. How did flying get so reliable? In part, because of accidents that triggered crucial safety improvements. Here are eight crashes and two emergency landings whose influence is felt -- for the good -- each time you step on a plane.

Continued: http://www.military.com/NewsContent/0,13319,152543,00.html

Background:

Full sized Dell Optiplex 745 tower.  Shipped with 1 HDD, and I installed another myself.  The drive I installed appears to be intermittently failing - doesn't appear in BIOS, and therefore disappears from Logical Disk Manager, My Computer, etc.  The HDD light stays on while the drive is not functional.

Cause and Resolution:

Since I didn't have a right-angled adapter on my SATA cable, I used a regular cable.  It didn't work so hot after about 8-12 mos of being crushed at a strange angle.

Can't say I'm surprised.

Bought a SATA cable with a right angled plug for $2.87 from DirectCanada via http://www.directcanada.com/products/?sku=1440142479C.  The cable is only 18" so it just reaches from the SATA plug.  I'd suggest something slightly longer if you're doing it, but this cable works fine.  Fits snugly, but not too much slack left in the cable.  Certainly not dangerous; you can easily swap some cables between devices around so that it works.

"Unrecognized file type" or "Error opening file" or "Error parsing file contents" are all errors we typically encounter, when we provide incorrect input files to applications.

I did that today, when burning a CD image file.  Here's what I got:

I had given it the ISO file; it wanted the MDS.  Instead of spewing the usual error message, I found this to be much more effective, helpful, and pleasant to use.

Today Microsoft is eager to announce availability of the Go Live release of Microsoft FastCGI Extension for IIS 5.1/6.0 (FastCGI Extension) as a free download. The Go Live release is the last step in the Microsoft beta process and represents the highest level of quality and reliability. For the first time, customers have a license that permits them to deploy the FastCGI Extension on their production Internet Information Services 6.0 (IIS 6) Web servers.

Download FastCGI Extension for IIS6.0 and IIS5.1 - http://www.iis.net/go/1521

What is it?

With Microsoft’s implementation of the FastCGI open standard, IT Professionals will be able to host PHP applications on Windows Server® 2003 and IIS 6 with increased reliability, scalability, and security. Customers also know that they will be able to count on Microsoft to stand by and service the Microsoft FastCGI Extension. By supporting the open standard, Microsoft has made it possible for PHP and other CGI compliant languages to be hosted efficiently and effectively on Windows Server 2003 and IIS. With the addition of FastCGI, IIS reliably and performantly hosts ASP.NET; classic ASP and PHP Web applications, making it easy for IT Professionals to standardize on IIS and Windows Server as their Web platform of choice.”

Where can I run it?

This FastCGI Extension release is supported on IIS 6 on Windows Server 2003 for a fully scalable production environment and on IIS 5.1 on Windows XP in order to support developers who build their Web applications on Windows client machines. This provides developers easy access to build and deploy a broader range of Web applications on the Microsoft platform. To further facilitate application support, the IIS product group is working with the community to test and optimize popular PHP applications on this platform.

What about support for Server 2008 / IIS 7.0?

Looking ahead, betas of Windows Server 2008, already include the FastCGI Extension as a completely integrated feature of Internet Information Services IIS 7.0 (IIS7). The new modular architecture introduced in IIS 7 will provide additional functionality to PHP applications by enabling them to take advantage of new managed code services.