In its place was not the familiar green hills of Windows 98, but a sleek, silver interface that looked like the bridge of a starship designed by a committee of marketing executives. The corners of the screen were dominated by "Panels"—News, Sports, Entertainment, Shopping.

Then came the merger. It was the corporate equivalent of two drowning sailors hugging each other. Adobe, kings of the static image, wanted the moving picture. RealNetworks, kings of the buffering icon, wanted respectability. They merged to create the ultimate multimedia suite.

To the uninitiated, the name made no sense. It was a collision of two different worlds—a header sponsored by a document company, a body built by a streaming pioneer. But to Arthur, a freelance archivist of "dead media," it was the Holy Grail of software bloat.

Installing Core Components... Installing RealSight™ Visualizers... Installing Adobe Type Manager for RealTalk... Installing System Heartbeat Monitor...