Yeah, they did fuck up, but at least they were honest about it and they apologised.

Most of the software companies I deal with fuck up, but they leave out the honesty and apologising parts.

"Vista, the latest version of MS Windows, Microsofts operating system upon which millions of users rely for work and play contains dozens of "frankly unacceptable" bugs, Microsoft said. The software company has removed the system from its site."

"Microsoft says anyone who has installed the OS should now uninstall it."

"The Windows Vista update Windows has been temporarily removed from the Microsoft site," wrote Steve Ballmer in a blog post. "Those Windows users who have installed Vista should uninstall the update and install Windows XP [the prior version]."

Can't see it myself, though. Even though I think MS have got a great deal more apologising to do than Adobe at this time!

Evil Graham is very forgiving of Adobe. I personally think they are one of the poorest software companies around, especially considering the almost criminal amounts of money they charge for their products (Photoshop CS3 £573, Acrobat 8 Pro £409 - any takers?).

Let's choose Acrobat as an example. The latest version is a bloated monstrosity that takes ages to install and update and often goes tits-up with the simplest of tasks. It failed to work at all when I first installed it and needed 40 minutes to retrieve and install the fix. The reader is no better and on the two machines I've installed it on has issues rendering text correctly (tearing when scrolling). Strangely enough Acrobat Reader 5 was really good, was a fraction of the size and had a lot of font smoothing options to make on screen text more pleasing. These have all gone in the latest version to be replaced by one option for CRTs and one for TFTs :(

Adobe make M$ look saintly in comparison.

I never download updates for Reader. It reads pdfs now, It is fully fuinctional already, it doesn't need any more bloat

Use FOXIT instead..recommended to me on here., it's a cracker!

I've been using Lightroom since the first beta, and they have been far more open and responsive with that product compared to any of their others. The development team has been very responsive to feedback, suggestions and bug reports both pre and post release, and they've been releasing new builds regularly which is very refreshing.

While it's fair to say that these bugs shouldn't have made it through their QA cycle, mistakes do happen and if you install ANY new software into a production environment yourself without in-house testing (or at least seeing what other users have to say), you have to expect problems now and again.

Personally I'd rather see Adobe continue with their frequent releases than move towards a less frequent release cycle like their other products.

Sounds like all other adobe products, they all have tonnes of unacceptable bugs, including acrobat reading (every time firefox appears to crash on my machine I just close acrobat process and weridly firefox starts working again, its as if is an adobe cock up not a firefox one!

And even when I used Acrobat Pro to produce a PDF it took about 5 odd minutes to do it and spent the time flickering about with the screen and opening up dialogs then closing them automatically - when MS office 07 does a PDF in well nano seconds really and so does the old free fave open office!! so how come Adobe's product is the worst.

Adobe are bloody hopeless!! (ahhh thats better got that rant out of me) lol

Adobe needs to clean up their UK pricing policy before they can EVER be considered a company worthy of your coinage. For purchasers in the UK, they literally charge almost the same number of UK pounds as they do in US dollars - for a product that you DOWNLOAD off their site, requires almost no support (and they give little support for), and has almost no UK development staff. But hey, we are from the UK, we have a lower standard of living than the US historically, but somehow Adobe feels they should just charge us double. *&!^ that, asshats.

Apple, who HAS UK stores, physical product distribution costs, real UK-based support costs, etc., only charge 10-20% premium for UK software and even hardware prices over US. Hmmmm? How can they do it?

I want to know how many Bently's the MD of Adobe UK can drive, or if he just trades them off for his Ferrari every other day on his way to their offices. It's sickening, really...unless UK consumers wake up and stop being abused, Adobe will just keep ripping us off and laughing all the way to the bank.

Go buy LightZone instead of Photoshop/LightRoom, get rid of Flash for Silverlight, go explore the wealth of other options, from vendors that actually don't laugh at how much they can exploit the UK buyer...

And just keep passing those cracked Photoshop CDs around...Adobe actually deserves a bit of piracy to lower the effective cost of their goods here in the UK...maybe someday they will wake up and put them in-line with real, currency adjusted, US prices...until then, they won't get a tupence of my money. And they shouldn't of yours, if you have ANY pride and live outside the US.

The skull and crossbones, from my last comment of course...

I don't use a lot of Adobe software apart from Acrobat (the writer as well as the reader) but I never said they weren't a bunch of rampant cash-hungry hack merchants.

However, compare them to IBM Rational. The prices they charge make Adobe look like the FSF, yet their software is a putrid swamp of bloatware and their tech support would be a joke, if we weren't paying them an arm and a house for the privilege of "support".

I dream of the day when they will even admit that there are any bugs, let alone fess up and apologise.

Adobe users, you are truly blessed to be fucked over by such gentlemen.

Is total pants, it doesn't work properly with OSX Leopard.

Distiller and Reader, no need to update and Quark 6.5.. well that's just like 6.5.

The best offering from Quark was 3.2 and all of their subsequent upgrades (improvements) have removed a lot of the functionality from it.

Okay, you now export designs to the web but they are piss poor IMHO.

Print programmes fro print, Web for web, and anything from Adobe to the bin.

To paraphrase Adobe: "We screwed up. Sorry."

Those four words made me respect Adobe once again.

My foray into the abyss (Adobe) began innocently with the product bundled with a Umax Powerlook 2000 scanner (bless her heart) Photoshop Ver. No.3.....yep, thats right! that was so long ago when you picked up your land line and called for help an actual human answered the phone after 3 rings who in turn spoke in a clear english...well maybe not english she was american, voice asked if I was using the Mac version. When I said windoughs 95 she explained through apologies for the Buggy nature of the porting and they were working on an update...Which was a LOT nicer then I was treated for asking Minolta why the RD-175 digital camera software would give me a blue screen notice telling me the 386 kernal sprout died.. Well I've got to toddle off to brisk game of shuffle board, where is that coat? oh! sorry I'm still wearing it.

Maybe I'm missing something but when I want to scan a document into Acrobat 8 I first have to say where it's got to be saved, which is tiresome especially as I then have to delete it if i don't then want it.

I don't know any other prog where you have to save a doc before creating it.

Do other users have this problem?

I've now gone back to Acrobat 7 which doesn't have any such nonsense.

I wonder what on earth Adobe were thinking of.

Nice to see what people pay hundreds of dollars/pounds for...

And as someone noticed above, why can OpenOffice create a perfect looking PDF in a second when Adobe hangs, crashes or just takes some 5 minutes to create one that does NOT look exactly like the Word DOC on the screen?

When my boss (Windows user, poor guy) has to create a PDF from a Word document he usually sends it to me besides using the Adobe software (linked from Word). Usually I'll get the email, open in OO (check for figure and caption placement problems), convert to PDF, and he'll have it back in his email before his run finishes -- if it ever finishes.