Adobe Acrobat Standard 9

The installation of Adobe Acrobot Pro 9 Trial Version took so long that I sadly decided to cancel the installation half way through. It was almost like installing a new Windows! I decided it's better to stick to the good old CutePDF Writer for now which is by the way free and less than 2MB in size (not 326MB). I use a WindowsXP with 2GB of ram and a 3.4GHz Intel Pentium4 processor.

I don't know what that user above is going on about. Maybe it's time they upgrade their computer and/or scanner and stop trashing the software. I have been using Acrobat 9 for several months now and have had no problems at all - it does not run slow and I have gotten no error messages.
It does have several new features that may not be used by your *average* user, but I would not consider something bloatware just because I do not use a particular feature or features. But even with that said, it is unfortunate that Adobe has stuffed a lot into 9 that your average person using the software to create PDF documents or for document conversion will not use. With that being the case, the near $300 they are listing this software is VERY unreasonable. They really should have been fair and marketed Acrobat better, but, no -- they are just as greedy as the next software company. :(

What I like about 9:
It takes snapshots of Web pages and will convert entire pages or particular areas of them to a PDF file. The conversion preserves links and animation.
Note: The preservation only seems to work with Internet Explorer. I have not been about to get the links and animations to transfer wile using Mozilla's Firefox.

Adobe 9 wraps video and animation into your PDFs and those who are using Adobe Reader 9 can view them. Pretty cool!

I've been using Adobe Acrobat for many years - basically couldn't live without it since I deliver 99% of my work to clients in PDF format. Version 5 has been great - stable, fast, does the job. Every time a new version is released I try it out. Version 6 was horrid and a crash-fest. Version 7 was a bit better, but slow and bloated. Version 8 was OK, but did not see a compelling reason to change from v5. Version 9 is the first time I've been willing to shell out more bucks. After a using it for about a month, I'm very happy I did.

One of my main uses for Adobe is creating PDF forms. Version 9 is the first time that you can set up a form that can be saved to disk by a user, provided he/she is using version 8 or above of the reader. Finally!! Granted, this feature should have been implemented years ago, but appreciate that it is finally here. The form wizard actually works in this version - saves lots of time in setup.

Creating PDFs is speedy and works well from every application I've used (WordPerfect, Word, Excel, several others). I always use the Distiller to create a PDF - print to disk as a PS file, then run it through the Distiller. Takes one extra step (versus using the create PDF button that is enabled in some apps) but it works 100% of the time, and allows you to tweak how the PDF is created.

I'm a bit miffed that I did not qualify for the upgrade price - you need version 6 or later, and I'm using 5. I think some type of discount should have been offered, or at least a free training book.

Installation is straightforward. Be sure to remove Version 5 from your PC before you install version 9. It should do it for you, but the process runs best if you remove it first, then do a clean install of v9.

So far no crashes or conflicts with other apps. Running it on a dual core PC under XP (SP3) and 2GB RAM. Not as speedy to load as version 5, but nearly as fast (and MUCH better than previous versions). Very nice update to the user interface - easy to find everything if you're familiar with older versions.

I went with the Standard version. The Pro and Pro plus (or whatever they call it) have more functions, but none that are important to the type of work I do. There's a good feature matrix on the Adobe site that explains the differences.

My main complaint is the price. At this price point, they should include one of their training guides, rather than ask you to shell out another $40 for a manual. Also, limiting the upgrade discount to just the most recent versions is a bit stingy on their part. But it works well, and for me, has already paid for itself. 4.5 stars!

Acrobat 8 has never integrated with Office 2007, or worked right with my scanner, so I foolishly bought Acrobat 9 in the hope it would be an improvement. It's not.

It seems Adobe simply focused on jamming more features into an already bloated and buggy application making things even worse. The office 2007 integration *still* does not work--even after spending hours trying the suggested solutions from Adobe. Beware, even for this $300 product, Adobe CHARGES for any phone support beyond basic installation help.

In addition to not working with Office 2007, Acrobat 9 is slow, throws up frequent error messages, and leaves part of itself running even after you shut it down which keeps Windows from shutting down without clicking past an "Acrobat has stopped responding" message. I also had trouble with Adobe's finicky product activation.

Memo to Adobe: More features are useless if the basics don't work reliably. People don't want products that take 20 minutes to install, forever to load, require hours of searching for and trying various support solutions to no avail, throw up frequent error messages, etc.

Someone else needs to come along (Google are you listening?) and derail Adobe's PDF train with a simple, reliable product that's more like Acrobat used to be in the old days (say version 5). For the 3% of the PDF users who actually *need* all the extra obscure publishing features, they can still buy Adobe's buggy bloatware. The rest of us just want reliable basic PDF support that works with the current applications and standards.