Photoshop :: CS4 Has Many Rough Spots

trying to get CS4 Design Premium to install. I finally managed, with the considerable help of a tier three Support Engineer. Since then I've had about a week's exposure to Photoshop CS4. Here's a list of things I don't like and/or those that don't work:

1) Program always crashes when I try to save a GIF file or try to use any of the new 3D tools.

2) I like two-across tool palette. When I drag workspace to left, it covers up this palette.

3) I like to leave three palettes open on the right, History, Characters and Layers. For no earthly reason that I can fathom the Layers palette has gotten considerably wider, and it cannot be reduced horizontally. Oh yes, I could reduce these three to icons, but then I'd be constantly clicking to open them and clicking to close them.

4) Open palettes have foreground precedence. This means that when I try to enlarge my workspace to the right, the workspace scroll bar disappears underneath the palettes.

5) The essentials button is destructive. I found this out the hard way when I clicked it and it wiped out a newly customized workspace. Now I know to save my customized workspace immediately upon completion.

6) Why did Adobe add the Adjustments button. It just creates an extra step when making adjustments. CS3 was smart enough to pop up the correct controls when adjustments were being made. Example: create New Adjustment Layer > Threshold. On my copy of CS4, I have to click Adjustments before the control shows up.

7) The new toolbar (at top of screen) wastes considerable space and is not deselectable. Hint courtesy of Support: Save your custom workspace with a very short name 2-3 characters; then this toolbar will combine with the menu bar.

8) Scrolling through highly magnified images is abysmally slow - much slower than it was on CS3.

9) The clone brush is less accurate in CS4, and it doesn't always turn off when one is finished cloning.

10) None of my CS4 files installed with responsive, indexed Help files. Now, every Help request sends me to a sluggish web site where there are no indices, poorly organized information, and in some cases just a message that Help area is under development.

11) I haven't been able to get the Patch tool to work correctly.

12) When program crashes (not always while attempting to save GIFs or 3D), it does so with generic, uninformative error message. In one week, I have had more Photoshop CS4 crashes than I ever experienced during the lifetime of CS3.

13) Why did the installer leave 34 superfluous language items (ones in anything other than US English in my case) in both the Legal and Lmresources folders? The product is bloated enough without oversights like that.

How many more will I find during the next week? I don't know, but I'm sure there are more to be found. How many of those that I did notice are due to the dreadful suite installer? I don't know the answer to that one either, but I suspect the installer may well have played a role.

I'm sure many will disagree, but IMHO Photoshop CS4's user interface is godawful compared to its predecessors. I can't find a single thing that can be accomplished with less mouse activity or keystrokes than earlier versions, but I have found quite a few things that demand more.

I was fortunate enough to have my installation issues addressed by one of Adobe's top support engineers. Had it not been for that, I'm reasonably certain I'd still be trying to install CS4. I've been using Photoshop since version 3, and the Creative Suites going back to the first one. This is the first time I've ever felt that quality assurance was completely ignored for the sake of meeting a self-imposed release schedule.

As I remarked in one of my earlier email exchanges with Adobe support, "I wish that every software Product Manager would study the reasons why Vista and Office 2007 have gotten such lukewarm receptions." I'm afraid the CS4 team didn't learn from Microsoft's mistakes.