Reviews (60)

Acrobat the Standard for Business Electronic Information
Adobe Acrobat remains the standard for business and government distribution of electronic formatted documents. The free Acrobat Reader is used to view corporate reports, technical manuals, tax forms and formatted online documents. Acrobat Reader works on every platform: PC, Mac, and Unix.

Adobe Acrobat 5.0 software lets you convert any document to a PDF file. Your document's layout, fonts, links, and images will remain intact when your use Adobe Acrobat.

What's new in the Adobe Acrobat 5.0 program?

PDF Writer is missing. Adobe Acrobat Distiller is added as a System printer. Also, added are enhanced security features like 128-bit encryption for passwording files and digital signatures. In addition, you have a new user interface and new Adobe Acrobat palette comments, information, fields and tags.

Adobe Acrobat has new menu commands, catalog, distiller, spelling and the unique function of saving Adobe Acrobat on the web. You can also create eBooks using Adobe Acrobat. In addition, Adobe Acrobat allows you to drag and drop new PDF files into the Master PDF.

Electronic Comments and Acrobat PDF Forms

Adobe Acrobat can shorten your document review cycles. Writers and reviewers can add comments such as electronic sticky notes and text highlights. You can use Adobe Acrobat to receive comments from multiple reviewers. Reviewers can add electronic comments quickly to an online Adobe PDF file.

Gather information and reduce costs with Acrobat PDF forms. Create interactive forms that look like their paper versions. Now you can easily link the forms to a Web server, so that computer users can fill them in and digitally sign them from within their Web browser.

You can use Photoshop 7 or Photoshop Elements to capture your files into Adobe Acrobat. Also, most scanners allow you to save your work in PDF with your scanners' OCR (Optical Character Reader) program. This allows you to print your work as a PDF file.

Pro Reaction

You can determine the skill levels of Adobe Acrobat person from novice to intermediate and finally to expert based on their PDF files work.

In Adobe Acrobat's thumbnail palette you can insert new pages quickly. Create documents anyone can open. Easily convert your Microsoft Office documents to Adobe PDF. Gather research information from the Web by downloading and converting Web pages to an Adobe PDF file. Then, you can save them as an Adobe PDF file with active links.

Con Reaction

Navigation changes in the Adobe Acrobat menus. The Adobe Capture document in Acrobat does not work on the Macintosh.

Final Notes

I use Acrobat both for my business and home use. The cross-platform of Acrobat reader has made my work easier when dealing with clients of the Windows' persuasion. Acrobat has been and remains one of my most important applications.

WOW! Convert a Website to PDF! &YES You Can Upgrade from 3.0
I called Adobe (as I was trying to upgrade from 3.0) to verify the allegations of the two previous reviewers and customer service said that Yes you can upgrade from 3.0, but you must call them to have them walk you through the process. Adobe has always been great in the past about upgrades (I mean what other company will sell you a cross platform upgrade for just about every product they make for the same price as the standard upgrade)? Version 5.0 has some slick new features including an enhanced WebCapture feature with the ability to download a web page or an entire site and convert it into a PDF file, retaining all the links. It doesn't retain the Flash or animations. Acrobat now also fully supports transparent objects, allowing further editing in programs such as illustrator. In addition, Acrobat helps the user 'recycle' PDF images, by allowing one to export images to TIFF, JPG, or PNG files. The text part can now be exported to RTF (rich text format). For people that need to prepare documents for the press, Acrobat now uses the ADOBE COLOR ENGINE, the same as that used for Photoshop and Illustrator (for consistency in output). Acrobat 5 also supports intra and internet collaborations, allowing team members to view the document in Web browsers, simultaneously writing notes and striking through and highlighting text. Often touted as 'the best way to share documents online,' the best got even better, and I HIGHLY RECOMMEND this upgrade.

This is the best deal going right now for Acrobat
By the time I was done reading the reviews for Adobe Acrobat 6.0 I was depressed. Not only do I not have Windows XP, or Windows 2000, or NT installed in my machine (The only operating systems that will work with 6) I also couldn't muster up the confidence in the product after so many people were giving it the thumbs down. I want to create an eBook, and Adobe Reader is the most popular reader out there, with some 400 million, to a half a billion users with it installed. What a dilemma. I kept coming back to read some more. Finally I found the answer. I bought a new Adobe Acrobat 5.0 here at Amazon from one of their vendors, and it works great with my Windows 98SE. I planned on buying the 6.0 upgrade after they got the bugs out, and or I got a new computer with XP. Then I found out that 5.0 was the only version before, and that was the professional version. 6.0 Standard is a geared down version of 5. Ok, so it has some additional features, but it is missing all the rest of the professional features that 5 has.
So what's the skinny on the deal? For what I paid for a new 5 that is the full program, unregistered, and upgradeable, plus what I would have to pay here at Amazon for the 6 Professional Upgrade, I saved 80 bucks, and wound up with both versions 5 and 6 pro. Which as I mentioned are both professional versions. If I bought 5 and upgraded to 6 standard, I would only spend a little more for both versions. (About 4 percent more for standard, and about 20 percent less for professional) That way if 6 standard turned out to be as bad as many were saying it is, I would have 5 also.
In the final analysis, I am using 5 and am super excited about the new capabilities that Adobe Acrobat gives you. I'm hoping that by the time I get a new machine with XP on it, Adobe will come out with 6.something, or a second edition of 6 etc. with the fixes built in.
I'm not the only one to come to this conclusion. I noticed in the sales rank at the time I bought it and wrote this review, that 5 was outselling 6. Also I noticed that in the "Those who bought 5 also bought this" section, it had a special note that said, 47% of the people who bought 5 also bought the 6 upgrade. If your running XP, 2000, or NT, get them both. That way all the bases are covered.
Check out the reviews on 5 you'll be surprised how everybody raves about it. To be perfectly honest with you, if I had an XP machine, I would have ordered the 6 upgrade at the same time. Hope this helps.

Merely a Stepping Stone
Since, for some unknown reason, Adobe doesn't offer a direct upgrade path from Acrobat 3 to Acrobat 6, I bought this Acrobat 5 Upgrade merely so I could qualify for a free upgrade to Acrobat 6. Not only is this silly of Adobe, it's also expensive. Instead of buying an Acrobat 6 package, sticking my old Acrobat 3 CD into the drive, and continuing on my way without further hassle or expense, I had to buy the Acrobat 5 upgrade, go to the Adobe website to find their customer support phone number, call them via their 800 number, get them copies of the receipt, pay a token shipping cost, and then install the new software. What's even worse is that I've spent over six weeks trying to do that. Amazon got me the package immediately. But, so far, I've had to talk to Adobe (at their expense) five times. The first time was to find out that the upgrade existed and get the instructions for faxing the information to them. Supposedly, my fax never arrived. Then, I had to talk to them about that and get a snail-mail address. Supposedly, THAT package never arrived. Then, with my next call, I managed to get an email address to send the documents to. Again, supposedly, that never arrived. Finally, I talked to a person who had me re-fax just the receipt and my Acrobat 3 serial number. She called me back within a half an hour and we completed the whole process (confirmed my shipping address and got a credit card number for the shipping fee). Besides the hassle I had to go through, this upgrade must have cost Adobe a bundle in phone and support personnel costs. The free upgrade period from Acrobat 5 to 6 is over now, but Adobe really needs to come up with a better way for their old Acrobat 3 customers to upgrade.

Newbie to Acrobat
Yes indeed Adobe Acrobat is too expensive, but, when considering the alternatives of buying other brands of PDF software that have less than pleasing quality, it all boils down to choosing the product that has the highest quality. To my knowledge, Acrobat is still the best PDF software available.

My personal needs are to create PDF files, encrypt them, require passwords to view, and restrict the user from printing and copying. After testing a couple other PDF products, I quickly discovered that their security was overly easy to bypass, no I take that back, they were *ridiculously* easy to bypass. Adobe's security has so far proven to be usefully solid.

Since Adobe provides limited public information about their products, I recommend that you first buy a book teaching how to use an Adobe package and read it through so that you will know what the software actually does and does not do. Yes, I agree, having to purchase a book and spend the time studying is not the prefered way to learn about any product, but the few dollars invested can easily pay for itself by your knowing which software to buy (or more specifically, what not to buy!).

What has amazed me the most with my Acrobat experience is when I had to call Adobe customer service to get a complex upgrade to version 6. Not only did the girl answering know what I was talking about, she also accomplished the entire order within that one phone call! WOW! Customer service like that is unheard of today. Apparently Adobe does care about its products enough to hire quality employees, and with that level of care, I feel more confident that I made the right decision choosing Adobe. Too, I purchased Acrobat from Amazon for the same reason of wanting quality service.

There are other PDF products available, some are even free, but for those of us who prefer quality and usefulness over initially lower costs, Acrobat is an intelligence choice. Choosing the right product today, the one that does not crash nor take time away from our work to fiddle with settings, gives us more time to whine about the costs later. If Acrobat were less expensive, I would give it five stars. ... Read more