OT? Is Adobe AIR bad for me? How to upgrade without getting it.

[mm]

Apparently my Adobe Plugin for Firefox 3 in XPSP3 on an 800MHz CPU
s outdated, and that may be why the plug in crashes pretty often.

Right now I have Adobe 9 and it wants to give me Adobe 10 point
something, with AIR.

IIRC, I don't want AIR.

Is AIR a problem, especially for 800MHz CPU, and if I take the
download, will I have to install it too????

Thanks.

 

[Paul]

Apparently my Adobe Plugin for Firefox 3 in XPSP3 on an 800MHz CPU
s outdated, and that may be why the plug in crashes pretty often.

Right now I have Adobe 9 and it wants to give me Adobe 10 point
something, with AIR.

IIRC, I don't want AIR.

Is AIR a problem, especially for 800MHz CPU, and if I take the
download, will I have to install it too????

Thanks.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adobe_air

"In January 2009, Adobe claimed that there were over 100 million
installations of Adobe AIR worldwide, and that "the majority of
AIR runtime installations occur at the time the first AIR application
is installed by a user". The large number of installations is
actually because Adobe AIR was included with all downloaded installations
of Adobe Reader 9 (released in July, 2008), Adobe Photoshop,
Adobe Lightroom, with no option for exclusion either in the
download or in the installation.

As of August 2010 Adobe still bundles Adobe AIR (along with the
application Acrobat.com) with the Adobe Reader 9.3 download, with
no option for exclusion, and the installation file for Adobe Reader 9.3
also installs Adobe AIR."

Funny stuff.

I don't expect it costs you any performance, unless it has some
crappy "service" running to check for updates or something. It
shouldn't be triggered, unless some application uses it.

Paul

 

[mm]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adobe_air

I use wikip but it never occurred to me to look this one up.

"In January 2009, Adobe claimed that there were over 100 million
installations of Adobe AIR worldwide, and that "the majority of
AIR runtime installations occur at the time the first AIR application
is installed by a user". The large number of installations is
actually because Adobe AIR was included with all downloaded installations
of Adobe Reader 9 (released in July, 2008), Adobe Photoshop,
Adobe Lightroom, with no option for exclusion either in the
download or in the installation.

As of August 2010 Adobe still bundles Adobe AIR (along with the
application Acrobat.com) with the Adobe Reader 9.3 download, with
no option for exclusion, and the installation file for Adobe Reader 9.3
also installs Adobe AIR."

So it looks like I'm stuck. I have a vague memory from adobe 9 that I
didn't install it, but maybe I just got a download from a place that
didn't mention it.

Why does adobe reader (and maybe acrobat) get worse some times.

I use Find a lot and it used to give a list of every instance found,
plus a count of them. I could peruse the list and likely find the one
I wanted.

Now its Find command is like the one in Notepad. (except it highlights
and goes backwards, but it doewsn't count or excerpt.)

Funny stuff.

I don't expect it costs you any performance, unless it has some
crappy "service" running to check for updates or something. It
shouldn't be triggered, unless some application uses it.

Okay. Thanks. Even though they say it restarts when I click again,
I'd like to get rid of crashes. Maybe this will.

Started my current version. ONly have AcroRd32 visible in task
manager processes.

 

[Donald Anadell]

Apparently my Adobe Plugin for Firefox 3 in XPSP3 on an 800MHz CPU
s outdated, and that may be why the plug in crashes pretty often.

Right now I have Adobe 9 and it wants to give me Adobe 10 point
something, with AIR.

IIRC, I don't want AIR.

Is AIR a problem, especially for 800MHz CPU, and if I take the
download, will I have to install it too????

Thanks.

Hi,

It's possible to install Adobe Reader without all the extra bloat(AIR,
Udater, etc) they attach to the setup file, but they don't make it easy for
a novice to accomplish this task.

It involves:
1. The creation of a Transform (.mst) file using the "Adobe Customization
Wizard".
Adobe has versions of the Customization Wizard for Adobe Reader 8, 9, and
X(10).

The process is much to detailed to spell out here, but the following link
should contain enough info to get you started:
http://blog.stealthpuppy.com/deployment/deploying-adobe-reader-x/

Good luck,

Donald Anadell

 

[BillW50]

Apparently my Adobe Plugin for Firefox 3 in XPSP3 on an 800MHz CPU
s outdated, and that may be why the plug in crashes pretty often.

Right now I have Adobe 9 and it wants to give me Adobe 10 point
something, with AIR.

IIRC, I don't want AIR.

Is AIR a problem, especially for 800MHz CPU, and if I take the
download, will I have to install it too????

Thanks.

Wow! You think 800MHz is old? I have about a dozen computers here that
runs at about this speed. My three netbooks has a 900MHz Celeron and it
is underclocked at 633MHz and it does fine for XP, awful for Windows 7.

I also have six Gateway M465. They can support Celeron, Centrino Duo,
and Centrino Core2 Duo CPUs. And I have all of them. And the latter two
has SpeedStep which automatically changes CPU speeds depending on the
load. And this one for example stays at 988MHz 99% of the time. My AMD
machine using the same idea called PowerNow. And that too often runs at
a lower speed.

So I don't see 800MHz as old for XP anyway and I don't care how old the
machine is. The big deal IMHO isn't the CPU speed, but rather how much
memory can such a machine have? As all of my machines (including
netbooks) can have at least 2GB and six of them can have 4GB. So it is
IMHO that the amount of memory is the most important part of the
usefulness of a computer.

So my question to you is, how much does it have and how much can it
support? None of mine has more than 2GB installed, btw. And those of
mine that has 2GB installed, I rarely use more than 1GB of it anyway.

 

[Ken Springer]

Apparently my Adobe Plugin for Firefox 3 in XPSP3 on an 800MHz CPU
s outdated, and that may be why the plug in crashes pretty often.

Right now I have Adobe 9 and it wants to give me Adobe 10 point
something, with AIR.

IIRC, I don't want AIR.

Is AIR a problem, especially for 800MHz CPU, and if I take the
download, will I have to install it too????

If you don't need the fancier features of Acrobat Reader, why even
bother to install it at all? Use an alternative PDF reader, and avoid
the dangers of viruses sneaking in via Reader.


--
Ken

Mac OS X 10.6.8
Firefox 3.6.18
Thunderbird 3.1.11
LibreOffice 3.3.2

 

[mm]

Hi,

It's possible to install Adobe Reader without all the extra bloat(AIR,
Udater, etc) they attach to the setup file, but they don't make it easy for
a novice to accomplish this task.

It involves:
1. The creation of a Transform (.mst) file using the "Adobe Customization
Wizard".
Adobe has versions of the Customization Wizard for Adobe Reader 8, 9, and
X(10).

The process is much to detailed to spell out here, but the following link
should contain enough info to get you started:
http://blog.stealthpuppy.com/deployment/deploying-adobe-reader-x/

Good luck,

I'll need it. Just reading the webpage was tough, let alone doing it.


Thank you. I'll wait to see if there is a problem with AIR adn then
maybe try the above.

For a short while I had a test computer, which I could have used to
test. I hope to have it available again, but not this month.

 

[mm]

Wow! You think 800MHz is old? I have about a dozen computers here that

It works well, most of the time, but I thought I should mention the
speed in case AIR was going to put me over the edge.


Thanks for all the advice everyone. I installed it, but haven't
restarted FF since then so it isn't running yet.

Someone in the Firefox ng, on a different server so I couldn't
crosspost, said I could uninstall AIR with Windows Uninstall Programs,
after I installed the whole thing. I doubt it, but I'll look into it.

runs at about this speed. My three netbooks has a 900MHz Celeron and it
is underclocked at 633MHz and it does fine for XP, awful for Windows 7.

I also have six Gateway M465. They can support Celeron, Centrino Duo,
and Centrino Core2 Duo CPUs. And I have all of them. And the latter two
has SpeedStep which automatically changes CPU speeds depending on the
load. And this one for example stays at 988MHz 99% of the time. My AMD
machine using the same idea called PowerNow. And that too often runs at
a lower speed.

So I don't see 800MHz as old for XP anyway and I don't care how old the
machine is. The big deal IMHO isn't the CPU speed, but rather how much
memory can such a machine have? As all of my machines (including
netbooks) can have at least 2GB and six of them can have 4GB. So it is
IMHO that the amount of memory is the most important part of the
usefulness of a computer.

So my question to you is, how much does it have and how much can it
support? None of mine has more than 2GB installed, btw. And those of
mine that has 2GB installed, I rarely use more than 1GB of it anyway.

I have a gig and a half in this one. Planning to have 3 or 4 gig in
the next one, ready as soon as I get off my butt.

 

[mm]

Well, I got AIR after all, and I don't remember having it before,
since this time AIR itself offerred me some online portion of the
NYTimes, and the graphic showed the crossword puzzle on top.

It is listed sepearately in install and uninstal programs, so I guess
I could delete it like the guy on the FF newsgroup said. It doesn't
list any space for it, but 3 our of 5 firefox entries don't, only the
program and download, not the plugin and AIR and one other thing.

If you don't need the fancier features of Acrobat Reader, why even
bother to install it at all? Use an alternative PDF reader, and avoid
the dangers of viruses sneaking in via Reader.

At the start, 10+ years ago I only knew about Adobe. Which one would
you recommend?

 

[SC Tom]

Well, I got AIR after all, and I don't remember having it before,
since this time AIR itself offerred me some online portion of the
NYTimes, and the graphic showed the crossword puzzle on top.

It is listed sepearately in install and uninstal programs, so I guess
I could delete it like the guy on the FF newsgroup said. It doesn't
list any space for it, but 3 our of 5 firefox entries don't, only the
program and download, not the plugin and AIR and one other thing.

At the start, 10+ years ago I only knew about Adobe. Which one would
you recommend?

After getting really tired of how bloated and slow Adobe had become, I went
with PDF-XChange Viewer
http://www.tracker-software.com/product/pdf-xchange-viewer . It's free for
non-commercial use, easy to install, light and quick. Works on a lot of
sites that other AR substitutes don't work on, including government sites
like SSA and IRS. It's easily configurable for any browser. I've used it for
a few years now and have never looked back.