Customer Reviews

Adobe Creative Suite Premium CS2 (Mac) [Old Version]

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

 

 

My intro to Creative Suite was via the Windows version of inDesign 1.0 and Illustrator. In the five years (?) since, I've switched from those stand-alone products to the entire Creative Suite for the Mac. Most of my time is with those two packages (illustrator and inDesign) as well as with GoLive and Version Cue.

Illustrator has always been (for my 5 yrs), and remains, excellent. My prior experience has been with Visio and Aldus Intellidraw (does anyone else remember that product?). Illustrator has the usual Adobe peculiarities which, once familiar, prove to be incredible time savers.

For someone who would be satisfied with MS Word, if it worked properly, inDesign is good -- but overkill (and I mean that well). Still, I spent 4 solid years with it, before moving on (?) to Apple Pages (it's better than Word, but lacks high-end features of inDesign that I don't need most of the time). inDesign, to my experience, works nearly flawlessly. Coming from an office that is very Word orieinted, my only complaints with inDesign are (i) steep Adobe-like learning curve, and (ii) tough exports to MS Word. As to point (i), inDesign is similar to the other Adobe products, hence, the time you spend with inDesign will benefit your usage of Illustrator and vice versa. As to point (ii), exporting works fine -- you just have to do it "story" at a time.

As to GoLive, I do simple web page creation and editing. GoLive is more than adequate for these functions and, I must say, I like it. Having come from a Front Page background (5 yrs ago), I found GoLive a little difficult to understand, at first. However, once I got the hang of it (over one solid weekend of playing around), I liked it. Early versions struck me as a little unstable (e.g., going back to GoLive 5, if I recall the number correctly). However, the recent versions have been just fine.

Version Cue is a interesting. I relied on it heavily for 3 yrs and I still do, to an extent. It's great for holding Version Cue product. However, don't get tempted, as I did, to use it as an extranet for folks outside your organization. It was not intended for that, I don't think, and does not do it well. That said, it's a cool way to store not only the many files created by inDesign, Illustrator, etc., but also related MS Word, Excel, PDF, and other files. Overall, the product works "pretty well." I relied on it for some fairly heavy and time-sensitive products, without failure. Still, there were times with the earlier versions that I wondered whether it was going to leave me in a lurch. It never did. The more recent version seems stabler, though, I do find myself migrating over to a more conventional DAV server for the same functions (albeit without versioning).

One gem in the new product is Adobe Bridge. I'm not quite sure how to describe it, except as a "desktop" that's great at viewing Adobe files. (Go figure!). It allows you to bounce around your local drive (as well, potentially, as network drives and Version Cue projects) to visualize your Adobe files. The integration is great: not only do you get high-res thumbnails, you can page through the Adobe files without opening the underlying applications.

Bottom line: second to my Powerbook (and the Apple software that came with it), Adobe Creative Suite CS 2 is the best computer product I own.

I am compelled to write this review since at least one reviewer complained about the installation being a problem. I did not see any problem whatsover. It was simply a breeze on my Mac powerbook G4. As to the quality of the product itself, it is too early for me to give a rating since I have just started using it. I will update this review in a month or so.

The Adobe Creative Suite Premium CS2 is an awesome product. I'm a scientific illustrator and this new CS2 contains almost all the software I need for my illustration and graphic design work. There are a lot of significant improvements over the previous CS version. Of all the programs I use Illustrator the most. Illustrator's new "live trace" and "live paint" features are really cool! Each of the programs (Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, GoLive, and Acrobat) work very well together. The new Bridge is great for finding and previewing image files. Photoshop and Illustrator are the industry standards. If you do professional work this is the best software to have. The price may seem a little steep, but in my opinion it's well worth it. I highly recommend this product.

If I had $1 for every time a CS2 app crashed and made expend real hours to redo work, I'd have about $10. And that's enough for me to say, BEWARE of this set of applications! Adobe has allowed them to get too bloated, too slow, and the results are that all the programs (but principally GoLive, InDesign and Illustrator, in that order) are crashy and will quite suddenly, forcing you to expend the precious hours of your life redoing work you just finished. I cannot stress how disappointed I am in Adobe, and how distraught I am that we as a nation have allowed the only two competing companies to join, thus guaranteeing that there will be less quality and innovation in the future. In any event, do not buy the CS2 apps, Adobe does not deserve your support!If I had $1 for every time a CS2 app crashed and made expend real hours to redo work, I'd have about $10. And that's enough for me to say, BEWARE of this set of applications! Adobe has allowed them to get too bloated, too slow, and the results are that all the programs (but principally GoLive, InDesign and Illustrator, in that order) are crashy and will quite suddenly, forcing you to expend the precious hours of your life redoing work you just finished. I cannot stress how disappointed I am in Adobe, and how distraught I am that we as a nation have allowed the only two competing companies to join, thus guaranteeing that there will be less quality and innovation in the future. In any event, do not buy the CS2 apps, Adobe does not deserve your support!

I received my CS2 yesterday and ended up spending over three hours on the phone with Adobe with installation issue and another 45 minutes this morning trying to get my free gift to no avail. Beware of what they tell you re: free gift! If you can't install the software and register THROUGH the software, you won't get your gift. It's a catch 22 - you can't register through the software if you can't install it, you can't get tech support if your product is not registered, so you register on the phone and NO gift!


Here is what happened:


Insert CD, double click on installer, prompted for password, then it quit with Apple's message "the ... has unexpectedly quit . . . "


Tried a few things using Adobe.com support knowledgebase. When trying to install on a different computer yielded the same issue, I called Adobe customer service.


Took a half hour before getting the product "almost" registered, then got transferred to tech support by mistake and they couldn't help me since my product was NOT registered.


Had to call back and did the registration thing all over again and was ASSURED that they could still send the email out for the free gift if I were to register on the phone (which was a lie I was told today). Another 30-45 minutes.


Another 20 minutes with some third party person (apparently Adobe does that BEFORE allowing you to talk to tech support to "weed" out the callers, great customer service, huh?). I finally spoke with a tech support guy who in turn was reading everything I already read online. He suggested that I copied the discs onto my desktop and intall from there.


Another 30 minutes of copying disk image, the installation failed the exact same way.


Had to talk to another third party person to get through to tech support. 10 minutes.


FINALLY someone who was knowledgeable who walked me through step-by-step on how to enable root user in Netinfo Mgr and the installation was successful!


No email on the free gift. 45 minutes with another Adobe customer service guy resulted in "we are sorry but the other agent was mistaken, there is nothing we can do for you regarding your free gift."


I started using Adobe products with Ilustrator 1.0 in 1987, have been a loyal customer and have switched from Quark to InDesign. BUT this experience made me sad that it is acquiring Macromedia. Now I have to deal with Adobe on my Flash and Dreamweaver products too!


I still love the products but Adobe's customer service and policy leave you wondering if it has gotten too big for its own good.