Adobe Horrors

Adobe Horrors

The very first time in 1995 a friend sent me a pdf, adobe auto installed corrupting my win95 registry, taking down my machine for 2 days.

Never have I had an adobe reader that didn't freeze up my (usually 4 year old) machines. Now I am using a 1,2, and 3 ghz single core machines, and still the adobe readers lockup my machines.

I downloaded and installed Opera Next. It worked beautifully for me, but wife complained it constantly locked up the system. I traced problem down to default adobe acroreader plugin. Changed it back to foxit reader, and all works well!

Adobe flash is same story. Video runs super smooth on linux and windows--tested down to 600 mhz 500meg ram, as long as you stick with vlc, windows media player, silverlight, or moonlight. Try to run adobe flash, and I get a popup saying, "Please insert $800 in coins to continue watching this video without jerking!"

Why would I buy a new machine to compensate for poorly written programs that don't pause long enough before updating controls. (loop: x=x+1 goto loop, without any sleep will freeze up any cpu core--no functional improvement.) Okay, I buy a second core, only to find out one of the cores is frozen with crappy code.

I am hoping html5, will solve this for single core machines, which I find ROCK for video (vlc, windows media player, silver light). Will they make same mistake as Adobe and write and test only for latest machines?

This forum is for issues with Opera, your post really belongs in the Software forum.

I never had any special problems with Adobe locking up my PC or something, but having a dual core is definitely an improvement in performance. I am not a fan of silver light and it looks like silver light is already dying, while VLC is one of my favorite piece of software.
I will have to wait to see what html5 will bring, but when i tried html5-videos with Opera on youtube it seems like it was kinda heavy for the PC. Maybe only Opera needs some more work on this and it is not a general problem.

Edit:
Yes, as Luxor pointed out. Probably not the right forum for this general software small talk.

Yes, it does. The default viewer is AcroReader, which will lock and screw up many people systems.

Opera will get the blame.

Furthermore, html 5 -which is spearheaded by Opera.com-- is supposed to replace flash. The single core issue is huge. And not something I have seen addressed.

Yes, I have tried at least one html5 video on utube and seemed heavy for single core. I wasn't sure if because it was in useless 1080 p format. I wasn't sure because everything got too gummy (single core and 768 download), I just gave up. I may be clueless, if I have unwittingly used it on other sites.

There is no point in buying a dual core just for video in full screen mode, unless you are a sheep or upgrading anyway. VLC, silverlight, even windows media player, have demonstrated a good player doesn't need dual core. Anyone kid write a program in 5 lines that will tie up all cpu cycles on a cpu core; while it takes some consideration and care to put sleep commands in where needed to lower cpu.


If Silverlight dies, I might give up my Netflix account. The video of Netflix is SOOOO well done, and works so much better than Crackle.com and years ahead of Youtube--because of the player. (Though, I think Netflix could probably do same quality at 400 kps with h.264)

Also, I am holding my breath to see if Opera 12 will help with single core video slideshow in full screen when using adobe flash.

Though, perhaps html5 will be so much smoother, that it may get a real foothold. (You need not just a good idea, but good execution. Example google, where not only did you get (unpaid for results) accurate results, but they were the only engine that would deliver results instantly, rather than in 7 seconds.)

Originally posted by 90sOperaHippie:

Now I am using a 1,2, and 3 ghz single core machines, and still the adobe readers lockup my machines.

I had a system (locked up recently) 550Mhz, 256 MB RAm, windows xp, a p3 system but both adobe reader and flash never screwed up the system....
Definitely, foxit reader always gives me better performance over adobe...

Originally posted by 90sOperaHippie:

I get a popup saying, "Please insert $800 in coins to continue watching this video without jerking!"

popup??

The foxit performance increase, is my point. Properly written, we shouldn't have to be forced into buying newer, faster machines to do same crap we have been doing for over a decade: video, voice recognition, audio cleanup/encoding.

The amnesia amazes me. Kids think that no one had computer or Internet in the 90s.

The distinct performance hit by using adobe flash and reader, is reason this is NOT a cafe topic, but a main line introspection topic relevant to future of Opera. The choice to design for performance, or for eye candy.

Even older, unexperienced users often can discern when a program is clunky and unresponsive.

I will note that, over the last year, I have seen minor increases in performance in Flash video on the same group of machines at my house.

Last night test: 2.4 ghz 1 gig ram and Opera 12 Next 1213, on XP home:

Also, flash shows on Hulu, are working more smoothly on Opera than on Chrome. We watched "the Middle" on hulu. Chrome was still largely a slideshow of images on full screen mode, though slightly less than a year ago. Opera flash, in full screen, largely would play about 6 seconds of smooth video, then about .5 seconds of frozen video. This with chrome and Opera at same "high" priority. If I set Opera to be realtime priority, the 6 second freeze mostly ironed out.

This is a big improvement for this particular 2.4 ghz machine. The video at hulu.com was starting to become tolerably watchable for the first time in years. I am guessing partly because of some flash coding improvements, and partly due to Opera 12 next improvements.

The smoothest flash video in full screen mode that I have seen, was at Sesemestreet.com , where all the user controls were absent from the flash UI. This tells me that the adobe UI is likely the problem. Likely they are updating some ui button, or progress, and failing to put in a sleep command. This is sure formula to lock up a cpu or cpu core with a useless over driven loop.

I mostly have no problems with flash videos on my Dual Core machines (both my 2.13 gHz Core 2 Duo with 4 gb ram and ATI Mobility Radeon HD4570 and 1.7 gHz Core Duo machine with 2 gb ram and ATI Mobility Radeon x1400 graphic card. Although flash video playback is mostly smooth, I have some problems with Flash games where the cpu fan would run at high speed continuously and the game would lag. No problems with any Flash content on my HP 6792uk desktop though. It has an 6 core processor (Amd Phenom II x6 1035T), 6 gb of ram, and an ATI Radeon HD6570 graphic card. The reason for my lack of problems could be that all my PCs have a dedicated graphic card and a multicore processor.

I will also report, hopefully to Opera Dev, that on all my single core machines, HULU flash, plays the best in full screen mode on Firefox, over Opera 12 Next, Chrome, Canary, IE.

Good software doesn't need dual processors to run. Programs that need this are locking up one of your cores with 100% cpu. I can see gaming needing multi cores, but all other sw have demonstrated they don't need dual cores. Especially computer video, which has been around for decades on much slower machines.

Originally posted by 90sOperaHippie:

Good software doesn't need dual processors to run. Programs that need this are locking up one of your cores with 100% cpu. I can see gaming needing multi cores, but all other sw have demonstrated they don't need dual cores. Especially computer video, which has been around for decades on much slower machines.

HD video definately need more "power" than low quality videos. Video is akin to games where a good horsepower PC need to run videos in high quality.