Are there deals like this for MS software?
Not any time soon.
If you are still waiting – now is the time to jump the sinking MS ship.

I do not do Windows, but I have windows to look outside.

What is the Microsoft Windows blue screen of death doing on my Mac?
I waited today half an hour for this thing to do something other than sit there. Nothing happened. Had to stop the virtual machine and close Parallels Desktop to get rid of it. This is normal behavior and usually I just close it without waiting. Today I wanted to see what happens if I give it some time and wait. Same thing. Nothing.

I do run MS XP Pro on my Mac when I have to check something in the native MS Windows environment using IE browser. I do not have physical machine to run that crap anymore. Parallels Desktop for Mac is perfect to run it. For $79.99 and the cost of XP Pro you get to have Windows on Mac. It behaves exactly like real XP, down to the blue screen of death. When I shutdown XP it gives me the standard windows closing sound and the blue screen.

I use it to check IE browser compatibility of websites, read documents in Word, Excel and PPS formats. I could convert the documents or use OpenOffice. However, it is infinitely better to use native platform on which the original was created. It is intuitive and obvious that use of native environment is best for quality control.

I fired the Firefox on the same site, the Flash Player appeared with all its buttons functional. Meanwhile for some reason the Adobe Updater started and asked if I wanted to download 136.5 MB of updates now or later. I let it rip. What choice did I have? Now or later, how about, go away you bloatware.

An ugly window opens up with the question – do you want to upgrade now? close all browsers and push go button. So I did. A long empty bar appeared and started filling up with a blue moving stripe. It stopped moving and got stuck almost halfway trough the empty bar. I waited ten or fifteen minutes. Nothing. still stuck in the same spot, right under the letter h in Flash. Cancel, reboot and try again. Same thing, stuck under letter h. Enough fun for today, it is too late, go sleep, will try in the morning.

In the morning the blue stripe got stuck in the same spot, I let sit there for half an hour. It started moving again and got stuck close to the end. I waited another half an hour. Nothing. Cancel and reboot. Do it again. Stuck again at the end. Wait, talk on the phone, do not pay attention to it. Check fifteen minutes later – success, done.

I do not have any problems upgrading any other applications. None require closing browsers and upgrade themselves while previous version is still running.

It is obvious from this abnormal behavior that something is wrong with Adobe software. What is in 136.5 MB of upgrades for one application? Replacement of the whole code that can not even replace itself?

Presentation of the Adobe wares is excellent. Watching the Flash demos on their website makes you want to have the software. That is how they got me to buy their new CS3 for Mac. Perhaps the people making the presentations should be involved in writing the application software, so the customer will get exactly what is being advertised, not the extreme bloatware that is being produced now.