Since to me this sounds very much like Adobe fucking up their own installer rather than something you can attribute to malicious scheming plans of the big evil Microsoft corporation (though we all know how much everyone and their dog loves to indulge in those kinds of paranoid speculations
), I read through some of the thread you linked to as well as searched a bit more for it on Google.
A lot of it was way over my head (all manner of installer related scripting and Java stuff), but it definately looks like there are several people who think this was a case of "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" - which was apparantly just what the guys at Adobe thought would be fun to do with CS3.
Sounds like the problem is happing to some people on XP as well, not just Vista.
No doubt Adobe will release a fix for it sooner rather than later.
__________________
Mike's Porn Site Reviews - because reading is good for you... Or something like that. [For site owners: I'm currently not accepting new requests at MPSR, but requests are open at my new site
here. Link trade requests also welcome.]