Installation
Our first attempt at installing the beta of Production Studio Premium didn't get off the ground. Our test PC didn't have the required 21GB of free space available on the system drive where most programs live – the C: drive - and where the installer points itself. For the second attempt, we pointed the installer at the PC's D: drive where a number of programs are happily installed. But this failed after 40 minutes because, we imagined at the time, we'd not had sense enough to shut down all other programs that were running on the machine.
The third attempt – again to the D: drive – was carried out after doing an uninstall and with no programs running. This also failed. The reason for that, we now believe, is that installer will only work properly if it's pointed at the main system drive – a limitation we see as not just unreasonable but unwise, especially given the size of the install. We also think it somewhat perverse given that so many Adobe programs have project options that make it easy to choose an appropriate drive on which to place temporary files or projects and their assets.
It's also kind of irritating that the installer didn't just come out and say – "Don't install on this drive, it's not going to work!".
So, for our fourth attempt, we did a selective install to the C: drive, without allowing any of the gigs and gigs of resources that get installed by default to be slapped on.
This way, we were able to get all programs in the suite onto the C: drive and still have 2.5G of free space remaining. The elements we did install took up a little under 5GB of space. Adobe's suggested system requirements for the two Production Studio bundles are listed out further down.
Something for which Adobe needs to be commended is that there is just one installer for the entire suite and one serial number. With past Adobe suites, it's been necessary to carry out an installation for each program – and to key in a serial number for each individual program, too. Good news, then, but it's been a long time coming when you think how many years single installers has been used with integrated office packages, such as MS Office.
The first time any Production Studio program is run, an online check is carried out for available updates. And, as with Adobe's Acrobat reader, checks can happen when any program starts up. In the case of our first running the suite, three updaters were reported and we allowed them to be downloaded and installed, bringing Bridge up to V1.0,3; Stock Photos to V1.0.5; and Illustrator CS2 to V12.0.1. Others have been offered since but we've so far declined.
Some people hate interactive
updaters. We rather like them but wouldn't necessarily update anything if the project being
worked on was important and the program seemed to be happy as it was
Okay, it's finally time for a bit of hands-on...