Customer Reviews

Adobe Creative Suite CS3 Design Premium [OLD VERSION]

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

[UPDATED: Successfully Installed after One Week of Failed Attempts!]

The following are my experiences using Adobe Creative Suite 3 (CS3) Design Premium on a Windows Vista Home Premium laptop. Your experience may vary. Hopefully, the hints about anti-virus below will save you time.

These issues may also affect the following other products.

* Adobe Creative Suite 3 Design Standard
* Adobe Creative Suite 3 Web Standard
* Adobe Creative Suite 3 Web Premium

I've been using and installing PC software for some 20+ years, ranging from commodity consumer programs to complex engineering packages. Installing the he Adobe Creative Suite package was challenging, at least for me on Vista. I suspect that the problem actually resides in Adobe's new anti-piracy licensing software. Adobe is certainly within its rights to protect their generally high-quality software. Unfortunately, it's apparently so secure that even paying customers have trouble using it!

I spent more time attempting to install the software than I paid for it! After trolling the various self-support sites, digging through Windows event files, and sumbitting a web support case (fortunately, Adobe's support team is generally quite good), it now works! In my case, I had to completely (and I mean _completely_) disable the McAfee anti-virus software on my machine. Adobe actually recommended that I completely uninstall my anti-virus program before attempting the installation, but fortunately McAfee allows you to temporarily disable itself. There is scant mention of any of these issues in the documents that come with the product or on the Adobe support pages.


Don't trust just my review on this. Please see some of the other comments on Adobe's own support forum site and other negative reviews on the web. Just search for "adobe cs3 install problems" and "adobe forums".

The Adobe products themselves are excellent, mostly best-in-class. Now that I have the product successfully installed, I would raise my rating to a '3', solely for the flawed installation process. Once installed, the programs work very well.

NOTE: Generating PDF from Word 2007 is different than for previous versions. You must now "Save As" and select PDF. There is also a XPS/PDF tool available directly from Windows that is very fast and generally produces good PDF. However, I encountered a number of problems with broken links after apply document security or watermarking on the Microsoft-generated PDF or optimizing the file size. PDF saved using the Adobe PDF writer took significantly longer to generate, but they worked flawlessly after apply security and watermarking. I'm chalking this up to the relative novelty of Vista.

By the way, be sure to select Help --> Check for Updates after installing the Adobe software. You will be udpated from Acrobat 8.0 to 8.1, which appears crucial for Office 2007.

I read the reviews about the installation issues and turned off my virus protection just in case, had no issues what-so-ever with the installation or the internet activation.

I'm running the package on a 3 year old laptop with Windows XP. Was worried that 512 Meg RAM would be too little but things are running smooth (but of course I cannot run many things simultaneously).

I'm very impressed with the products offered in this package, it covers all my design needs and more. I'm new to many of the included products but don't find them as intimidating as some people claim. The package has many advanced features but that does not mean that it is complicated or difficult to use, the most common tools are easy to find.

If you need a professional design studio package, don't even think about buying anything else than this.

Like the others here I have had horrible problems with this software. Initially we spent 7 full days installing. Once we finally got the install done (and I wish I'd had the guy with the McAfee problem talking to me when I started: same fix) it worked for about a week. Now Dreamweaver will not open, and I have hundreds of SideBySide errors on my computer. I have googled the problem and it seems others are having the issue but no one has a solution. When I e-mailed technical service I got a brief reply telling me to reinstall....it didn't look like they even took the time to look and see if it was a legitimate problem.

Best advice....don't buy it.

I have Vista and installed the program in no time. I have had absolutely no problem and I LOVE the software. It's worth it.

The Adobe CS3 release is much quicker on both Mac and Windows. Performance is one of the best features of this release, although the tight integration between the older Macromedia products and the staples like Photoshop and Illustrator are also great time saves. This is one of the most exciting and valuable upgrades by Adobe in a long-time.

No where in my order for Adobe Creative Suite 3 (Old Version) was Student Licensing mentioned. If I had wanted Student Licensing I would have purchase Adobe Creative Suite 4 (New Version) directly from Adobe for $499. This is a business and a business can not legally use a Student License. This re-seller first blamed Amazon for deceptive advertising, Amazon had to force the re-seller to give me an address to return product to and once I did return re-seller is not acknowledging that the product has been returned. I believe American Express is going to help with my refund. Also AMEX indicated there has been a lot of problems with Amazon.

Does everything I need it to as a graphic designer. It took me a little to adjust from the CS2 software but have had no real issues with the workability.

If you absolutely have to do industry level design work, accept no substitutes. Adobe products rock!

I have to admit that I was a bit worried after reading the reviews regarding installation problems but I was able to just pop the disks in, install, activate and update.

I purchased the software from another site going on a year ago now and haven't had any trouble with it since. I'm running Vista Premium 64 with AVG anti-virus software on a mid level system. Although I haven't even begun to tap into the abilities of the programs, I have used Photoshop, Illustrator, and Bridge extensively for personal use and for my design classes and I love them. Each program runs fast when I'm not experimenting with large amounts of gradients and filters on the screen at once. Also previewing the 3D tools bogs my system down a bit but the problem is on my end not the software.

My only problem with this suite is that CS4 came out so soon after I purchased my copy of CS3 but that was a mistake on my part.

System Specs (for reference)
OS: Microsoft Windows Vista Home Premium 64 bit
CPU: Q6600
RAM: 4G DDR3
GPU: EVGA 8800GTS
HDD: 250G Western Digital (system drive)
500G Western Digital
250G Western Digital (Adobe CS3 + 3ds Max)

Their programs work on both my desktop and laptop and they have once again improved over previous versions and it gives you such a wide variety of opportunities for creativity. Of course it is a monster program so you need a fast machine with space available to run it and it is good to know how to use it or get training as much to learn. I am glad Adobe bought Macromedia and have incorperated it with Adobe.