CS3 Packaging Downgraded?

[MarkAlsop]

Adobe CS3, Design Premium just walked in the door. Since I’m currently teaching full time at a high school this is an education version and the exterior packaging is not what I have come to expect from Adobe. If I had not purchased it from a legitimate reseller that I had done business with for over 4 years I would suspect it was a pirated package.

Has anyone else noticed the packaging is not what it use to be? Probably doesn’t mean anything but I notice little things like this an get to wondering about them… when some is out of place like this little red flags start dropping on my mental field of play.

[George J. Fenisey]

Yep! Ecology green package... Less material and seemingly recycled...

But the book offered with the upgrade was inexpensive very nice layout and 800 pages of excellent quality finished pages. I am glad I decided to buy it.

Good work Adobe!

[Gerry Kerr]

I quite liked the packaging - recycled and recyclable materials and as big as its needs to be

Gerry

[mbanstendig]

I think they made a huge mistake.

A decade or more ago, after trying to save money downsizing and simplifying packaging, the industry realized that downsizing the packaging meant less sales. So they delivered full-sized boxes that held their own with any other large application on the retailer's shelves and caught the eye......and contained almost nothing to fill them up. And they sold again, the way they did before they had tried to downsize and save money there.

Either the people at Adobe are too young to remember, or they are making an educated decision that their stuff sells mostly on the net, so they no longer are putting anything much into catching the eye of the store-goer. Or some vice-president type or other needed to do something new to justify his/her existance and ignorantly thought they were saving Adobe a bundle making the packing cheaper.....and had the chutzpah to think it was their idea and no one ever thought of that before. (Me, I would go with the last possibility.)

In any case, as far as stores are concerned, unless everyone is downsizing and there will be little or no display of products in the store, I think Adobe has made a huge mistake. They will miss a lot of business from new people whose eyes would be caught by eye-catching packaging.....and nothing catches the eye like size.

Adobe is being cheap elsewhere, too: with aps that are lightweight, contain little, but cost 600.00 for an upgrade and double for an application, they are shipping with DHL Ground shipping, which will not deliver unless that expected due date arrives: what that means is that my $600.00 Suite upgrade, in that little, lightweight package, arrived in San Francisco in the wee hours of Monday, and was not brought out/delivered to my home until Wednesday afternoon. It was there early! And they wouldn't just deliver it! They held it until the end of the time for Ground delivery and then delivered! Another example of Adobe not gioving or getting the service someone should insist on. They give DHL enough business for DHL to deliver their packages right away if the packages happen to arrive sooner than listed.

This World really has changed....really!!! For the worse, in most cases. And people think us older codgers are just remembering times that were no better than today. Adobe, for exmaple, used to be something very different, and much more together.

And, BTW, PS CS3 is essentially just the old thing warmed over, and a few things added. Not the great new thing one would have expected....except for the Intel Mac dual and quad capability. That is a really new thing for all, at least those with those CPUs. But all the rest are things we can live with and without, or not even know about, while going on with our business as in PS CS2.

[Noel_Carboni]

Warmed over? Mark, IMO you're wrong on a lot of fronts. Have you actually used CS3 much yet? Of course it's not a rewrite, but the little things they've done have made it a much better, more useful product. And some of them are subtle, but powerful nonetheless. I for one am sure glad I don't have to learn a whole new user interface!

C'mon, people don't buy a new copy of Photoshop because the box looks better than the others on the shelf. The price is too high for that, and the Photoshop boxes are in the locked case anyway. They buy it because they did the research and found it's the best software for the job, or because they've already invested in an earlier version of Photoshop and will be buying the upgrade no matter what (I bought it as a download myself; I like that form of packaging - very green indeed!).

Oh, and CS3 is the most stable .0 release yet, as far as I can see. I'd say Adobe has done a great job here!

-Noel

[mbanstendig]

I am not complaining, as much as pointing out realities.

Those little things are nice, but many a matter of opinion. For example, the levels dialog: they changed the unit to .05 instead of .07. That is laudable and makes many things more delicately precise. But they forget that the original values were arrived at for real reasons well researched and I foten find myslef adding in the .07 first step, because the .07 step is the first easily seeable difference in most photos, which is why it was originally chosen. .05 is not seeable enough and the .10 goes too far for subtle improvements in that area. So, for example, an option within that dailog box for the user to quickly decide what value to use would, IMO, have been better than just changing the value per se.

And yes, a lot of little things are nice. And there probably are, as usual, some things for truly power users that are big improvements......but not used by many.

And so forth.

I have experienced much bigger changes in past updates.

But I support Adobe. I am just keeping objective about this.

And for the little money the hard package cost, they could have spent some money on making sure DHL delivered as soon as it arrived.

That really was annoying.

But I hear you and do not disagree.

And if they do an update that makes the scroll bar pull stand out from the scroll bar background when bridge is in white-background mode, I might really be happy with the thing. Right now, either the white text on black background is hard on my poor eyes but I can see the pull on the scroll bar, or the black text on white background is easy for me to read, but every time I want to use the scrollbar I have to get really close and look hard to find the almost-white pull on the white scrollbar background. You would think someone would have noticed that and made the scroll bar conform to the system coloring and not be affected by the rest of the application's backgrounds, like in most other applications.

And yes, you will have something to say about why I am wrong about this. Fire away.

Mark

[DierkHaasis]

Like Gerry I really like the new box, instead of packing a small disc and loads of air in a completely oversized box, it is now just the right size - easy to handle and store away. The design has been on an outer slipper for some time, and I do like the matte finish - it is a break-away from all the high-gloss razor mirrors pretending quality.

The actual box, a slip-case, is a well thought-out design, too.

But then, I am one of those liking the new program icons, useable with subtle touches instead of completely cryptic like the last two versions.