Anti-Windows Catalog

The devil you know, versus the Adobe you don't

Written by Gordon Fecyk, 1/28/2013

FOOL ME ONCE, shame on you. Fool me three times, shame on me.

When I started looking for replacements for Corel's Roxio-branded media creator suites, I had this phrase in mind. It's bad enough I had a suite of applications with no end of trouble, but I encountered a community that was downright hostile toward anyone who would dare suggest their products had bugs. "Why, there are no memory leaks in Roxio products," says one forum moderator. Bull - [censored] - [censored].

In what little time I've had between contracts to look, I haven't found a video editing suite I really liked that was also affordable within a limited budget. So I thought I would finally consider saving my money for Adobe's Premiere, or barring that, maybe Premiere Elements. I had not used a suite especially designed for 64-bit Windows before, and I had hoped Adobe would uphold its reputation for, erm, "quality software on the Macintosh," on the Windows side of things.

Boy, was I surprised.

NOT ONLY WAS I EMBARRASSED to see both Premiere Elements and Premiere CS6 fall flatter than a pancake on the quality side, but I encountered a community even more hostile than Corel's. And that's not the best part: One post in that discussion took a turn for the livid. A forum moderator deleted it, but since I receive e-mail for every post in a public discussion I'm in, I can consider this response intended for public viewing:

Then I'd argue you're not doing things right (like using IE instead of Firefox with appropriate security plug-ins). -- Jim Simon, MVP, Adobe Community.

Let's see, I'm an IT professional of twenty years, a fanatical tester of bad software, and a practitioner of safer computing on Windows since 2003. And I'm not doing things right.

Now, that is a reason I can get behind, for Apple to be hostile toward Adobe these days.

I'LL GIVE COREL CREDIT for at least paying attention to safe computing on Windows. Memory leaks or not, at least Creator 2011 ran with safe computing in mind. And it worked just as good, or bad, on Windows 8 as it did on Windows 7.

While I am still afraid to look at Creator NXT, at least they took the effort to have Microsoft test it for Windows 8 compatibility. The "Windows 8 Compatible" logo proudly displays on the box and on the website. I don't see it on any of Adobe's products right now.

Maybe Corel has finally fixed the memory leaks that aren't leaking memory? I don't know. But at least Corel is making the effort. That's more than I can say for Adobe.

Related Links:

• Troubleshoot system errors, freezes | Windows -- Adobe (Step 11: Abandon all safety, ye who use our software)
• Windows 8 Compatible Logo Requirements -- MSDN

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