It's enough to be trying hard to keep up with all there is to read and do these days. The last thing I want in the middle of an engaging and important read - is to be thwarted by an Adobe update. I still love Photoshop, and I'd love to love Adobe as well - but their automatic software updating process is a nightmare. I've had several bad experiences in the past and yet another today...

I was about half way through reading a PDF document - when I noticed the insidious little updater icon appear in my system tray. I ONLY have the 8.0 PDF reader installed and I foolishly thought - surely just updating my reader won't be a problem. Ouch.

First I needed to close my article. Ok - my fault for not finishing it first - but I thought I'd be right back. The updater claimed it was 0% complete when I had just received a message saying that my updates were downloaded and ready for installation. The UI and notifications we so bad that I thought I was done - and so I reopened my PDF. Something died and I got an Adobe application ending error. Then the installer came back to life and I got a new Adobe Reader icon on my desktop and a message telling me to restart my PC. WTF? I'm just updating the Adobe reader right? Not reinstalling the OS! I'm now completely out of the flow of the PDF I was reading and swearing at Adobe as I restart my PC.

On restart I notice for the first time that scrolling an eleven page document in Adobe Reader is incredibly slow and unresponsive - it's not keeping up with the mouse and this is a top spec box (5.4 on the WEI).

Adobe - what have you done? And where are you going?