Adobe has released Adobe Creative Suite CS4 Design Edition on a Subscription basis to the Australian market only. It's an experiment, presumably, to determine whether it's worth doing on a worldwide basis.
It has a few unique glitches I had to fight with myself, so for the benefit of those who come after...
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1) There is ABSOLUTELY NO STANDARD WAY to install the Subscription Edition if you have an expired trial version installed at the same time.
For example, I had a trial version of Flash.
The Subscription Edition installer said "oh - you already have Flash installed, so I don't need to install it again". But the problem is, the Flash that is installed with the Subscription Edition is a slightly different version of Flash that knows how to accept subscription-based license keys and otherwise interoperate with the Adobe Subscription Manager. The Flash trial, in contrast, will never recognise the Adobe Subscription Manager, even if your subscription is fully paid.
i.e. you're forced to uninstall everything, then re-install using the Subscription Edition DVDs.
A pain, but at least it works...
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2) If your subscription expires, and you want to renew it, Adobe documentation says you need to use the Adobe Subscription Manager which, supposedly, is installed on your computer.
The problem is, there is no link to the Adobe Subscription Manager. Anywhere.
Even doing an exhaustive search of "C:\Program Files\Adobe" (including subfolders) failed to find it, using the wildcarded search term "*sub*.exe", and when that failed, the wildcarded search term "*man*.exe".
So I called Adobe tech support.
I note that they have a special phone queue just for Subscription Edition customers.
Hmmm - smacks of there being a lot of other people experiencing problems...
... but to their credit, I was speaking to a human within about 30 seconds! I was very impressed.
They wanted to know my customer number, which took me a while to dig out, but when finally they had linked me to my order, they were ready to answer any questions I might have.
I asked how to find the Subscription Manager. The woman on the other end found the answer very quickly - they must have a good search tool for their internal help docs, or else it must be a very common question (or both) - and it lives in C:\Program Files\Common Files\Adobe\Adobe Subscription Manager CS4 and is called AdobeSubscriptionManager.exe. Hurrah!
So I double-clicked.
And nothing happened.
Something fishy going on here...
I opened Task Manager and saw a program called ADOBES~1.EXE. Ah! I remembered seeing that earlier in the day. Suddenly it dawned on me - the Adobe Subscription Manager is probably supposed to be launched automatically, but at least in my case, it failed to ever show a UI, and got stuck running in the background.
But because there was one stuck instance of Adobe Subscription Manager running in the background, it prevented any new instances from starting.
Easy fix - I killed ADOBES~1.EXE using Task Manager, and double-clicked AdobeSubscriptionManager.exe again.
Waiting...
And after several seconds, huzzah! There it was.
I thanked the Adobe technician and proceeded to reactivate my subscription.
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So there you have it, ladies & gentlemen - some little known issues with Adobe Subscription Manager, and corresponding workarounds.
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4 comments:
On Mac.
Adobe cancelled my subscription after we had to cancel our credit card (due to theft) and get a new one.
We notified them that we had a new card.
3/4 computers had no problem. 4th.. they cancelled my subscription without any prior notice. They did not try to contact us... yet we'd already contacted them.
Spent 3hrs on the phone to them. They cant help. Lost 3 Days so far productivity.
Thinking that a CRACK is the only solution to Adobe.
F**CKERS
Yup - their systems are certainly causing problems. Few problems, perhaps, but real and severe ones.
Hacks/cracks might be one workaround. I tend to avoid them for multiple reasons, including risk of virus/trojan.
One very undesirable alternative is to create a new virtual machine every month, and re-install a 30-day trial each time. Sounds like pulling teeth without anesthetic.
There are other interesting approaches available, with varying degrees of convenience.
Of course, when you've paid for a subscription, there is no consolation in having to resort to trickery to take advantage of what you've paid for!!! Thanks Adobe..................
i reckon.
I can easily install a cracked version... the reason i subscribed is so i could do it legitimately.. but seems Adobe want me to use a crack (they actually told me over the phone i can use one until they fix it - which may be never)
So over it right now. I just need to do my work.
I hate adobe subscription manager, We have an auto subscription but each year it never seems to automatically update even though the subscription fee has been paid(by my boss on another computer so I don't pay through the subscription manager pop up on my machine.) I keep getting a subscription manager pop up box telling me I need to pay and if I quit out of that box more than a few times the CS software simply stops working. Adobe tech support are hopeless. I spent hours on the phone with them last week and they told me to uninstall and reinstall CS but the bloody pop up came straight back. I quit out of it and it kept working for a few days but today I had to restart my computer and now the subscription manager pop up box is back and no CS software works again. Tried adobe support again today and their tools are down and they cant help anyone today!
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