Adobe's Chinese torture

Adobe sent me a copy of Creative Suite 3 Production Premium to play with recently, which was nice. So this morning I thought I'd install it (or some of it anyway), which turned out to be a real time-waster.

During the install, various dialogue boxes carry a pull-down list of available languages, and the first two or three sensibly defaulted to English — sensible, given that the OS, Windows Vista, is in English.

This must have put me off my guard, because when it came to the dialogue box where you select the components you want to install, I failed to notice that the default language had somehow changed to Chinese. No warning appeared along the lines of "Do you really want to install a huge amount of software in a completely different language to your OS and every selection you've made up to now?" So 45 minutes and four DVDs later, my system was duly CS3'd up. With Chinese-language apps, which I discovered on launching Photoshop.

Of course, it was then that I found a yellow card in the (very large) box, helpfully advising that: "If you do not specifically select the language that you purchased, the installer may default to the wrong language and you will not be able to use the software. If this happens, you will need to uninstall and reinstall the correct language, which can be a lengthy process."

Thanks for that, Adobe. And can I have 2 hours of my life back?