As Adobe announced its new lineup of CS3 flavors, I couldn’t help but feel a little confused. The myriad of options reminded me too much of the dozens of flavors of Vista that Microsoft came out with recently. I’m all about choices for consumers… but there’s a point when too many choices just breeds confusion. So since Microsoft and Adobe seem to have adopted the same business model, I figured why not join together and combine Vista with CS3 – offering consumers 4,232 configurations of vista flavors and CS3 versions.

But straw that tipped the scales in my little theory was my attempt to use Adobe Acrobat Professional during work today. After a lengthy boot time, I was prompted (again) to update the software which had accumulated 4 updates from the last time I had used it… yesterday. It was then that it hit me how bloated and heavy Adobe Acrobat was. Similar to many Microsoft products, the software started out great – useful, fast, innovative, small – but then grew in features and menus and widgets to scare any normal user.

So with both companies offering too many product options to count and both companies offering about a dozen updates a week… their combination would be a match made in heaven, wouldn’t it?