Yeah, I couldn't get LR to run on my Mac Plus 512 either.
But seriously, I've been using LR since beta 1 and somehow I got on the list of beta testers that are featured on the Adobe LR website. I was even video interviewed by Adobe about my LR experiences at the Photo Plus Expo this past November. I had the dubious honor of walking into the interview room in the middle of Jeff Schewe's interview causing them to stop the filming. (Sorry about that Jeff, but the guy outside said walk right in.
I'm an amateur photographer with a passion for nature, fine art and travel subjects. I used to use CaptureOne and Photoshop, now I only use LR 1.1 and PS3. Fine art prints (flattened tiffs) are still output to my Epson R2400 with ImagePrint's excellent RIP (version 7.0 currently).
To me, the best thing about LR was the whole experience of the beta program. It encouraged great discussions (or debates) in these forums and others on workflow, the future of image processing software, and a host of other related topics that allowed a lot of people to communicate in forums that would otherwise not have existed. Personally, it fired up my passion for photography and allowed me to focus on making images and quickly and reliably refining them with post processing that used to be a tedious, one-at-a-time process.
As part of the beta experience, I actually ditched my Dell PC's and Windows XP (yeah!!!) and replaced them with a MacBook Pro 15" and a Mac Pro 8-core desktop. The last time that I used a Mac before switching was over 13 years ago. Thank you very much LR for bring me back to the Mac.
All of the cool stuff like the Adobe LR Adventure to Iceland, George Jardine's podcasts, tutorials by Michael Reichmann and Jeff Schewe became available to all of us because of LR. If you didn't advance your knowledge of photography and image processing by being exposed to some or all of this great stuff, then you must have been living under a rock for the past year.
One more thing. I support Michael and Jeff by buying the tutorials and most recently, their excellent "Camera to Print" series of tutorials and, of course, being a charter subscriber to Michael's Luminous Landscape Video Journal. So if you want the good stuff to continue, spend a few bucks.
Thanks to all for a great first year with LR. The future of this product and photography is very exciting.
Now, I'm off to Quebec city and Bar Harbor, Maine for an overdue family vacation. Of course, I'm taking my Canon 1Ds MkII, a couple of lenses and my MacBook Pro loaded with LR 1.1!
Cheers.
Bud James
North Wales, PA