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I received Adobe Photoshop Elements 11 as a Christmas present (one which I unfortunately had asked for). I've been using Elements 2 for many years now, and figured I'd take the plunge and update, hoping to be amazed with all the advances and new features that have happened since 2002. My interest in Elements is solely for editing photos. After an extraordinarily lengthy install (I have plenty of RAM, fast drives, and an 8-core processor), the first thing I noticed is that it opened INSTANTLY when I started it the first time, a little TOO fast. Sure enough, they thoughtfully load a chunk of their program on bootup, and keep it running in the background constantly, tying up resources and potentially getting in the way whether you are using it or not, just so they can shave a second off their load time. Edit registry, remove startup item; done. The next issue is security. I use ZoneAlarm as my software firewall (in addition to a couple of hardware firewalls). Mainly I run ZoneAlarm as a means of keeping track of any attempted outbound activity on my computer that I didn't initiate. Normally, on the first startup of a program, a message pops up asking whether I want to give permission to the application to access the web. Guess what? No popup. Looking into ZoneAlarm, I discovered that Adobe apparently has figured out how to hack Zonealarm, and granted themselves the maximum trust level/permissions. In addition, I found that if I changed the security settings to restrict it in any way, at the next startup of Elements, the settings had all returned back to maximum privilege. Of about 5 Adobe program components that registered themselves in ZoneAlarm, the only way I was able to restrict settings and have them remain in effect was to set the trust level to KILL on all but one. And evidently those 4 items weren't needed, since the program started up without problems after that. After screwing around with all of this for well over an hour (maybe even two) I was actually able to kneecap all the extraneous Adobe nonsense to the point where the program was running only when I actually wanted it to. I have no interest in the photo organizer. I have my own system for managing my photos that works well for me. I find that programs which offer to do stuff for me almost always guess wrong what I want, and simply get in the way and create more work and distractions for me. I don't need them scouring my drives and "helping" me by adding folders and files to their database without asking me, nor did I need to be presented with a dialog every time I started Elements asking which program I wanted to start (the organizer or Elements). Yes I know that it can be turned off; however even when off, you're still loading other stuff besides the photo editor. Eventually I ended up hunting down the actual Elements program and making a shortcut directly to that. (I did run the photo organizer for a bit to give it a chance, and I stand by my previous statements). Finally in the photo editor, I found that very little had changed functionally from version 2. Things had been moved around, menus had been renamed, but I found next to nothing of actual value had been added in 9 - count them - 9 - full versions and 10 years. What they HAD accomplished was managing to eat up considerable screen real estate by making the tool settings area HUGE, tying up another large band across the top with a menu bar whose only purpose is to switch between noobie and expert mode, and additional other clutter which can't be resized or removed entirely. The result of all this was that in order to actually get any work done, I'd have to be constantly turning items on and off just to have a decent area to work. I'm really only interested in seeing the photo I'm working on, not admiring all their pretty icons and color choices; if I'm not currently using something, I should be able to get it out of my way easily. My screen resolution is set at 1280x720, so it isn't like things are crowded because I'm running at 640x480 or even 800x600. Since that's my monitor's full resolution, I can't exactly bump up the resolution any further, and if I could, I'm sure that Adobe has figured out how to make that just as crowded too. But wait! There's more! Aside from the program itself being a disappointment, there's also this program they trick you into downloading called AAM - Adobe Application Manager. This program is allegedly to help with keeping all of your Adobe software updated, but actually serves no purpose other than to give Adobe further access to your system, and to constantly check whether you've stolen any of their software or not. REALLY? Updates can still be performed through the individual programs WITHOUT this P.O.S. present. Doing a search on this program revealed a message board conversation, where one of Adobe's people apologized about this, promised that it wasn't a marketing ploy, and gave instructions for removal of the program. BTW, did I mention that this AAM did not show up in Add/Remove Programs and also runs constantly? Downloading their uninstaller and following their instructions did not remove the offending software. Nor did uninstalling PhotoShop Elements (along with all user settings). AAM still was on my system and running until I killed the process tree and removed it manually. I had installed Elements the evening before and had worked solely with it for several hours, so I did a search for all files/folders that had been created the previous day. A stupendous amount of crap had been left on my system AFTER A FULL UNINSTALL WITH DEACTIVATION. The entire AAM program was still there. (Anything in Program Files\Common Files\Adobe\OOBE and below is involved in this rubbish. Under this folder PDApp\core\PDapp.exe is the actual culprit.) After deleting all the offending files and folders, I then proceeded to run several registry cleaners, and with the leftover files missing, they found plenty more Adobe residue to remove. I'll continue to use Elements 2, at least for the moment, since it has worked well for me over the years. Once I find something else suitable to replace it with however, it's gone. I'm finished with Adobe, since apparently there is no actual upgrade path and they are more concerned about jerking around with my computer and creating eye-candy than actually writing a useful program.