Adobe Fs-up their Trial Software

Today I decided to download the 30 day trial of After Effects CS3. Of course, this meant navigating the Adobe website which always results in some type of unpleasant experience. Well, today was no different.

This time I was unable to download the trial because "Product trials are unavailable until July 1."

"Why?" I asked myself. Surprisingly Adobe had an answer for me, although I'm surprised they were willing to admit their rather embarrassing mistake:

"During the month of June 2008, certain product trials that are launched for the first time (regardless of when they were installed) will function for only one day instead of 30 days, due to an error in a line of code that counts down the remaining days in a trial. You will not experience this issue if you have launched your trial before June 1, 2008, or do not launch it until July 1 or thereafter."

And so, rather than taking the time to fix the problem Adobe would rather let it expire by not letting potential customers try out their product for a month. Pretty amazing.