Adobe Blues

[billroper]

Well, no thanks to the folks at Adobe, but I've now got the new version of Creative Suite installed and running. Aside from their crappy copy-protection scheme, they also have a crappy omnibus installer that can't successfully uninstall Acrobat 7 so that Acrobat 8 can be installed.

This wouldn't be so bad, but the omnibus installer simply fails and doesn't tell you why. And, of course, technical support wasn't open last night when I was trying to install the mess, nor would it be open again until Monday.

I finally teased their knowledge base into revealing that you had to run the stand-alone installer for Acrobat 7 to uninstall it. You also have to pull up the Task Manager and kill three processes that load up automatically when you have Acrobat loaded, but at least it tells you which three processes.

If you've been working with PCs for 25 years, this isn't too complex, I suppose...

Comments

[filkertom.livejournal.com]

I love some Adobe software. I hate Adobe installation, uninstallation, and updating software. And, as you say, background software. And more background software. And yet more background software. As bad a resource hog as anything I've ever seen, and almost as annoying as Real and Quicktime. I'm getting damn sick of programs and software companies that Have A Wonderful Plan For Your Life. Just run and work, is that so much to ask...?

[kizoku42.livejournal.com]

Yeah, and I hope your management is smart enough to understand how hard a job it is. Some people think it should be easy, and if it isn't then that means you're incompetent.

[billroper]

Well, in this case, the management is Gretchen, since I'm doing this at home, but the principle is the same...

[tigertoy.livejournal.com]

I've only been working with PCs for a bit over 20 years, and it sounds way too fucking complex to me. The entire notion that it's OK for software to be so bloody complex that you have to have special programs to "install" and "uninstall" it pretty much defines what's wrong with Microsoft.