2007 Story Set
| Date: June 21, 2007 I finally installed Creative Suite 2.3 from Adobe - which contained DreamWeaver 8 and Acrobat 8 Pro. I also have OpenOffice 2.2.1. And, unfortunately, Office 2007. (The Mac runs Office 2004, which I love!) I have a Newsletter due out. Adobe announced Creative Suite 3 (and it comes in three flavors - Design, Web and EVERYTHING). My son said get "Everything" and just don't load the excess. Lovely. It also comes with Acrobat 8. Thing is, I WANT DreamWeaver CS3 because it allows drag and drop pictures to a web page (does the Photoshop step for you). Integrated. Nice. Timesaver. I am big on timesavers. So I needed to upload the previous purchase before I leap into the breach ($3000 I believe) for two upgrade licenses (yes two) for CS3 - one for the PC and one for the MAC. Gak! I also did it (install Acrobat 8 Pro) because - here comes Acrobat 8.1 patch, which is designed to support VISTA and Office 2007. Unfortunately, I had installed Office 2007 on my Toshiba (fortunately, still running XP and NOT VISTA). BIG MISTAKE! Evidently, the push to get Acrobat compatible with the new mess from Microsoft required them to meet a release date that was unreasonable. That is to say, they did not properly validate that the new patch, Acrobat 8.1, actually worked. It doesn't. You can make a PDF file - and those with Acrobat 8.1 might be able to open it. They certainly cannot print it. No one can print it, regardless of the version of Acrobat they are running. Acrobat 7 Pro will not print it - well, it will, but the text and numbers are garbled and you get squares for characters. Not exactly what you want. Acrobat 8 users on a PC get an error message (Printer not available or something like that). On the Mac, the job just sort of wanders off. (My son said it got an EOF.) Leaves you very confused. Users, whose first reaction, drilled into them over the years by arrogant software manufacturers, is to suspect that THEY are at fault, ran around re-installing and beating themselves up. Reboots (I did that), testing other files (I did that). They checked cables (I did that). And then they got upset (Oh yes). The more logical of us (I am logical) tried something else - you see, the MAC allows drag and drop install, and I never uninstall the older versions. (I think I have 4, 5, 6, 7 and 8 now.) I have had Acrobat since it was a demo on floppy disk. I think I only recently tossed those floppy disks. I don't care what Adobe says. The MAC behaves. The PC de-installs Acrobat 7 for you, in other words, you are screwed. But not the MAC. So --- I opened Acrobat 7 Pro, opened the bad file made by 8.1 on the PC, re-saved using the Acrobat 7 Pro driver (in the print window), and made a new version of the file. Then, using Acrobat 7 Pro, I printed. (HP 2420d LaserJet - not a trivial printer.) Just fine thank you. Poor PC users are trapped in limbo (Unless they re-install Acrobat 7 - which will bitch at you that you have a newer version and are you sure - just say yes). Disgusting. The number of man-hours (OK, woman-hours), that were chewed up by this little mess, is incalculable. The user forum has been grumbling. I sent feedback twice to Adobe in response to "Did this meet your needs?" - the question on the 8.1 feature page - "Look what we fixed". Should be, "Look what we broke"! All this to serve Office 2007 (which should be banned from all offices in the first place). Well, they aren't getting served either! My only comfort! |
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E.White.
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