what the f%$k are companies like Adobe thinking when they hard code their software NOT to run on older yet equally capable operating systems, forcing people to pay for upgrades they don't want?!?!? Even though they've put all sorts of new protection schemes in the new CS line, hackers probably had it cracked weeks before it was released anyways With any luck, someone will hack it so it'll run on the older OSes. From what I understnad, it's not that it isn't capable of running, it's just not allowed to...

when I say "With any luck, someone will hack it so it'll run on the older OSes", I don't mean a pirated version of the software itself, just a hack for fully registered versions so that the people who paid way too much for it to begin with don't have to pay for a Windows upgrade as well just for the privelidge...

:) i know! i gave my daughters my older computer and i got another one when PS first required "win98"...

and i've had to do it again this year (XPpro on a DELL)

it seems like software is pushing beyond the shelf-life of hardware with these latest upgrades. Whatever happen to being able to use a system longer than 3years without major upgrades just to stay current???

i rant with ya,
:(
retocity

I understand your rant,and agree that many companies do try to force you to upgrade with new products that are not backward compatible. But in this case,I think the plain simple truth is the new Photoshop would be very unstable on any Win9x OS (Win98SE being the best of that lot). The memory requirement for PS keeps going up with each new version and feature...(I know I had to add more memory when I upgraded from 6 to 7). Win 9x OS,with it's poor memory handeling, can not allot more than around 256 meg of memory to any one application at a time (and that's on a good day)....it simple can't give Photoshop enough memory to run smoothly. Your not going to like to hear this...but it's time for an OS upgrade...all your programs will love you for it. SWAMP

That AND Adobe could be in bed with MS (helping them make other older OS's become obsolete). Just my usual cynical viewpoint.

It's also a question of how many different systems they can support - older Mac systems are also being dropped by many publishers. However, I believe Painter 8 will run on 98 even though it isn't officially supported, so it might have been possible to have offered an "on your own head be it" option.

On a Pentium 4, 2ghz, with 512 ddr ram, Photoshop CS would run fine on a WinME system. It is a question of technical support most likely, and not that they couldn't handle it (they could before afterall), it's that they don't have to if the installer and software search for 2K or XP beforehand, and just refuse to function on it. someone please hack it...

While I do have sympathy, because I have been in that same boat before.... the sympathy is limited. I doubt seriously that it has anything to do with a 'joint effort' between MS and Adobe. While I do not consider MS to be an ethical company as far as their business practices go, I have to give them credit that they have managed to keep an awful lot of compatibility in place between their different versions of OS. Face it, technologies change, soon we will be living in the 64 bit world of hardware and software and one drives the other. For those who are not capable of keeping up, they will always be behind and be unhappy campers. For the rest, life will be great when it comes to the computing experience. A friend of mine is still trying to use Win 95, he is mostly successful, however, there are plenty of problems when he wants to change hardware or software. His tough luck for being bull headed. Folks should start thinking about where they want to be several years from now when it comes to their art work and the computer / OS that they use to create it with. If you are using 6 year old technology you will not have much of a leg to stand on when you start to complain. No offense to anyone, but I have been listening to this same complaint for a number of years and people should just really stop and think. Photoshop is expensive enough so that it is not sitting on every home pc, now is it. In other words it is not a $45 dollar shoot-em up game that will run on nearly every home computer. Its market is the art world and quite frankly if you can afford $600 US for PS, you ought to be able to afford a decent PC to run it on. Adobe has done a really good job of backward compatibility so do not blame them if PS is sluggish on your computer and you are using legacy hardware and software, blame yourself. BabaLouie