If you recently switched to the Mac platform, as many people have, and planned to buy the Upgrade version of CS3, read the fine print. According to Adobe:

Upgrade pricing is available only for products listed above and requires a qualifying previous product on the same platform, with serial number. Upgrades for volume and education licensing are handled separately.

Also, if you read their Upgrade FAQ [link], they say:

Q: Can I upgrade from one platform to another for Macromedia Design and Development products? For example, if I own Dreamweaver for Windows now, can I switch to Dreamweaver for Macintosh when I upgrade?
A. No. You must purchase your upgrade product on the same platform as the eligible product that you now own.

This means that if you had planned to cross-grade your PC version of CS, you won’t be able to.

At least, not at retail and not without calling Adobe at 800-833-6687 and requesting a cross-grade.

The process took over an hour, but at the end of it, I was able to do a cross-grade for the same price as an upgrade (with the exception that Adobe charges tax in Texas, whereas Amazon does not). It takes 3-5 business days to process the cross-grade after faxing in an ominously named document called a “Letter of Software Destruction.”

It is unbelievable to me how difficult cross-grading turned out to be, especially given the number of people who have moved to Mac since the Intel switch. But kudos to Adobe for two things: 1) their customer service wasn’t outsourced to India, and 2) the person whom I spoke to was extremely nice.

Quote source: Adobe Store [link]

I received word from Amazon that my order of CS3 that was due to ship on the 20th has been delayed until as late as May 10th. Amazon did not provide an explanation. They simply updated their shipping estimate.

In a word: DOH!

[eop]

Apple announced the launch of its 8-core Xeon MacPro today [link]. Great for them.

I can tell you this: 8 cores is undoubtedly superfluous unless you’re ripping h.264 movies all day and all night (in which case, you’re probably not reading this blog).

I am the very, very proud owner of a quad core MacPro. This thing is a dream. It’s quiet. It’s incredibly fast. It’s stable. It’s the best computer I’ve ever owned or used (and we’re talking about a long, long history of computers to base this judgment upon).

However, my gripe is that there are any number of bottlenecks that need to be addressed before you throw more processing power. I pretty much keep the Activity Monitor open all the time. In all this time, I don’t think I have ever seen my CPUs get pegged. Occasionally, I’ll see a spike on one of the 4, but never have I seen all 4 rise above the 10% mark in unison.

So is it worth the money to get 8 cores? Apples to apples (sorry), no. Your money is much better spent on RAM, and RAID-configured hard drives, thus alleviating the two biggest bottlenecks on the system.

On my Quad as-ordered, I had a single 500gig hard drive and 2 gigs of RAM. This was a mistake. Parallels needs RAM. Rosetta needs RAM. And everything hits the hard drive. In recent months, I’ve upgraded to 4 gigs of RAM which makes it possible to run Parallels and Dreamweaver at the same time, and I cannibalized an old PC to add a pair of 250 gig hard drives configured in RAID-0. Holy crap is this thing fast now.

And still I rarely touch my CPUs. 8 cores is just not necessary in 2007.

Apple announced the launch of its 8-core Xeon MacPro today [link]. Great for them.

I can tell you this: 8 cores is undoubtedly superfluous unless you’re ripping h.264 movies all day and all night (in which case, you’re probably not reading this blog).

I am the very, very proud owner of a quad core MacPro. This thing is a dream. It’s quiet. It’s incredibly fast. It’s stable. It’s the best computer I’ve ever owned or used (and we’re talking about a long, long history of computers to base this judgment upon).

However, my gripe is that there are any number of bottlenecks that need to be addressed before you throw more processing power. I pretty much keep the Activity Monitor open all the time. In all this time, I don’t think I have ever seen my CPUs get pegged. Occasionally, I’ll see a spike on one of the 4, but never have I seen all 4 rise above the 10% mark in unison.

So is it worth the money to get 8 cores? Apples to apples (sorry), no. Your money is much better spent on RAM, and RAID-configured hard drives, thus alleviating the two biggest bottlenecks on the system.

On my Quad as-ordered, I had a single 500gig hard drive and 2 gigs of RAM. This was a mistake. Parallels needs RAM. Rosetta needs RAM. And everything hits the hard drive. In recent months, I’ve upgraded to 4 gigs of RAM which makes it possible to run Parallels and Dreamweaver at the same time, and I cannibalized an old PC to add a pair of 250 gig hard drives configured in RAID-0. Holy crap is this thing fast now.

And still I rarely touch my CPUs. 8 cores is just not necessary in 2007.

Apple announced the launch of its 8-core Xeon MacPro today [link]. Great for them.

I can tell you this: 8 cores is undoubtedly superfluous unless you’re ripping h.264 movies all day and all night (in which case, you’re probably not reading this blog).

I am the very, very proud owner of a quad core MacPro. This thing is a dream. It’s quiet. It’s incredibly fast. It’s stable. It’s the best computer I’ve ever owned or used (and we’re talking about a long, long history of computers to base this judgment upon).

However, my gripe is that there are any number of bottlenecks that need to be addressed before you throw more processing power. I pretty much keep the Activity Monitor open all the time. In all this time, I don’t think I have ever seen my CPUs get pegged. Occasionally, I’ll see a spike on one of the 4, but never have I seen all 4 rise above the 10% mark in unison.

So is it worth the money to get 8 cores? Apples to apples (sorry), no. Your money is much better spent on RAM, and RAID-configured hard drives, thus alleviating the two biggest bottlenecks on the system.

On my Quad as-ordered, I had a single 500gig hard drive and 2 gigs of RAM. This was a mistake. Parallels needs RAM. Rosetta needs RAM. And everything hits the hard drive. In recent months, I’ve upgraded to 4 gigs of RAM which makes it possible to run Parallels and Dreamweaver at the same time, and I cannibalized an old PC to add a pair of 250 gig hard drives configured in RAID-0. Holy crap is this thing fast now.

And still I rarely touch my CPUs. 8 cores is just not necessary in 2007.