Trying out CS4 and a suggestion to Adobe.

Question

Hi all:
I've been trying out CS4 while waiting for it to come in at the
University computer store.
At work on my new Dell Optiplex 755 with 4gig of memory, it flies!
At home with my old Gateway and HP laptop, not so good. The openGL stuff
doesn't work on either one. The video card in the Gateway is an ATI 550
with 250meg of memory and the latest drivers I could find. It claims to
have openGL 2.0 but it doesn't work.I found a bit of software on the web
that checks to see if your video is suitable for a video game. It claims
that my system has openGL 2.0 and should work with the published spec's
for CS4 but it doesn't work. This all reminds me of the early days of
personal computing with the compatibility wars were manufactures fought
over who was most compatible and if the software didn't run it was the
hardware's fault not theirs.
My suggestion is for Adobe to make a video test tool that users could
use to validate their video hardware and software. I would like to buy a
new laptop for use with CS4. But it is hard to tell looking at the
spec's for laptops if they will work. If I had this tool on a thumb
drive it would be easy to check.
All in all I've spent more time with software and hardware problems
affecting Photoshop than I've spent on any other programs. As an
engineer I use some powerful and complex software, and none of it is as
fussy as Photoshop is.
John Passaneau
Physics Electronics Shop
Penn State University

Answer 1

>My suggestion is for Adobe to make a video test tool that users could
>use to validate their video hardware and software
Well, see it that way: The trial is your testing tool. As your failed attempts with that game-centric tool more than eloquently prove, there's a fundamental difference between an abstract capabilities test and using features in a practical implementation. Come to think of it, any testing tool that would provide a maximum breadth of possible scenarios would probably be quite complex in itself, drawing resources from fixing stuff in the programs themselves. I know it's a *****, but consider that vendors of other programs face the same situation. It may look smooth on the surface, but from personal involvement I know that even e.g. in 3D programs sometimes programmers will implement a specific workaround for only a given graphics card or series of cards that does not comply to the (theoretically) unified standards of OpenGL. It's not much different for Adobe, for sure. At best, one could argue that they had all the money to buy every card and test it, but even that doesn't hold true. In a way, that race has long been lost, as sad as it is...
Mylenium