It didn't work for me. I had CS3 Master Collection on my old laptop running Vista, which is dying. Bought a new laptop running windows8, installed cs3 and it told me to deactivate on old computer, which I did. On new laptop everytime I try and use any cs3 program it asks to me register, then I get an error message and it crashes.
I did adobe support chat and they told me this:
Sowmya: I checked for the information and found that the older version software are not compatible with Windows 8 and hence you are facing this issue.,
Paula: so there is no way to use my cs3 on my new laptop? Is that what you're saying?
Sowmya: Yes, you are correct.
Paula: ok. thanks for your time, but that is super bad news for me 
I'm thinking about dual operating systems on my new laptop, and maybe that would work.
I really like Xara, but it wouldn't open my DW html file.