Microsoft blocks Ryzen and Kaby Lake users from updates on Windows 7 and 8.1

While trying not to hijack the thread I’ll just make a 90 degree turn for a moment as a recent situation I’ve had with Adobe has something in common with it.

I got Photoshop LE 15 or so years ago, followed by Elements 2. CS3, CS5, and Elements 10. I’m about to hold a workshop on Elements and thought about using Elements 15 for the demo. The target group for the demo are artists, some of whom have computers and use some flavor of P.E. and some who want to start using it after seeing what it can do in depth.

Much to my surprise, Elements 15 only runs on a 64 bit version of Windows. If you are running a 32 bit Windows version you are out of luck as the last version of P.E. is almost completely gone from virtually all retailers. Adobe is currently offering P.E. 15 on sale for $70. Best Buy has P.E. 14 listed as being stock for $100. Given that nobody else has the product I tried to find out is the information on the website was accurate. No joy. I tried to find out from Adobe if somebody could buy the now discontinued version 14 because they only had 32 bit Windows.

Google listed an 800 number for Adobe. That number was changed, call this new number. Called and got the menu tree, followed that down the rabbit hole till I got “Adobe no longer offers phone support of Adobe Elements, try our website” I just came from their website and want to talk to a human. I called their company headquarters and the operator went through the menu tree for me and... I wound up in the same dead end as before. Called back and got transferred to India. The first person I talked to had no idea how to buy P.E.14, I finally talked her into letting me talk to her supervisor who had a phone line that let me understand every third word or so. Hung up, called the New York office, left my information and was assured somebody would call me back,(that was five days ago, no callback), called the Washington office, they were closed at 4:30, called San Francisco, got as far as being told that I could buy it at Best Buy.

Adobe moved just about everything over to the Creative Cloud a few years ago which is by subscription and it looks like they are trying hard to kill their last piece of software that a customer can buy outright.

#41 I use Adobe Dreamweaver CS6 for making websites instead of Adobe Dreamweaver CC which connects to the “cloud” and has many complaints of slowness as it is always phoning home.

I can layout the website with Adobe Dreamweaver CS6 easily as the controls make sense compared to the confusing new layout.
I use other sites which have free layout tools and copy/paste the code in Adobe Dreamweaver and make changes from there.
I create my templates and reuse them so no need to pay for an expensive new version that is slow due to this “cloud” fixation of theirs. Adobe allows you to download older versions of their products.

Here is their forum with useful complaints and tips for those that use the product.
https://forums.adobe.com/thread/2230485?start=40&tstart=0

I would think getting a anti spyware program like Malwarebytes and a anti virus program like Webroot then you do not need to update Windows.

Automatic updates are sold as something that makes your computer “safer”. That is the funny thing about all of these updates... many of them are security related, some address other issues, some add functionality. The vast majority are not very necessary for most people. And combined they do take up a lot of storage space and processing power, especially if you are using a computer that is several years old.

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