Why did I pay to upgrade to Elements 8?

Question

I'm becoming increasingly frustrated with Adobe. Not just for Elements 8, which yesterday drove me to the brink of wanting to throw my computer out my ninth-floor window. But also from this website, which, once again, did not remember who I was, despite my logging in as myself. All my previous posts have vanished. It asked me to create a screen name, which I'd already done once or twice, and then told me the one I have, EdHoover, was in use. Y'think? That's because I'm using it! After backing out six times, it finally just put me logged in as such. (But all my history is gone.)
Anyway, the reason for this post: Elements 8 is terrible. It is in no way an improvement on 7.
It sucks up memory. I have a 4GB Windows Vista computer that runs anything -- anything -- like a song. Except PSE8. It routinely puts my CPU usage at 100%. I know a lot of the problem has to do with the Auto Analyzer; I made the mistake of using that, and I've read elsewhere here that there's no real way to quit using it. One must force-quit it from the Task Manager in order to stop it (even after PSE8 has been closed); immediately afterward, CPU usage goes back to normal.
The user experience in Editor has been changed from what worked in the past to something new. Usually, when you make these tweaks, they improve the user experience; here, they're just annoying. I'm talking about how Adjustment Levels are treated, and the very minor detail of when I hit "reset" while making a levels adjustment, the active tool does not stay on the eye dropper, so I have to go back and click it all over again. (They've even got rid of the shortcut for "reset" - you can't press R for that anymore, you have to go click it.)
Another annoying change: the New Layer/New Adjustment Layer, etc. buttons are now at the bottom of the layers menu, which is very annoying - they used to be right up at the top, very close to where you were already working. Now you have to go out of your way to do them.
My Elements keeps crashing. Probably related to its memory suckage. But it's been crashing a lot lately.
Probably related to the crashing, but every time I now launch PSE8, I have to go "take the tour" to see what's new in PSE8, as if it's the first time I'm opening the program. EVERY BLOODY TIME. There is no way to cancel out of this; I have to go through THE ENTIRE STUPID TOUR I DON'T CARE ABOUT before I can actually get to work.
That's all I can think of at the moment. But I have to get this rant out on this forum, because apparently to send feedback to Adobe only entails suggesting a feature (here's one: make your product suck less) or reporting a bug, which is too limiting and specific for the problems I'm receiving.
And oh yeah, I'm totally saving this in Word, because I know as soon as I click Submit it'll give me an error and lose what I've written.

Answer 1

Regarding #5, you shouldn't have to take any kind of tour to use the program.
If there's a problem with your Photoshop.com account, like if it's full, it can cause issues like this with the Welcome screen. Basically, there's an error dialog displaying, which basically "freezes" the Welcome Screen, but the animation is appearing on top of the error so you can't close the error. (In a lot of cases, you can press Space bar and it'll close the error.)
To get beyond this:
Open Editor (from Program Files\Adobe\Photoshop Elements 8.0\PhotoshopElementsEditor.exe) or Organizer (from Program Files\Adobe\Elements Organizer 8.0\PhotoshopElementsOrganizer.exe).
At the top of the application, you'll see something that says "Welcome Ed" (or just "Welcome" with the name tied to your account after it). Click on this.
When the dialog pops up asking for your password, don't enter it and instead click Sign Out.
You should then be able to start the application in the usual way without having to sit through the animation.
If this works, then it likely means there's an issue with your Photoshop.com account. If you don't use it, then just don't sign back in.
If you do use it, though, then you'll want to find out what problem there is. The most common thing I see is that you're account has filled up. In any case, just log into the Photoshop.com website and you should be able to discover the issue quite readily.
HTH