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Rating: 
Summary: The "Visual QuickStart" books benefit experienced user most
Review: The "Visual Quickstart" books (like this one) are great for users and developers that are already using the software and need a cookbook of helper hints to get the little annoying tasks done that you just can't seem to figure out on your own. It's a great series of books!This book in particular is great for users and developers of PDF documents that are definitely experienced in using the Acrobat 4.0 product, but just need a little help to get some of the tedious and quirky tasks done. The first time user may benefit, but will be lost in the book until they start interacting with the software on their own. I am a software developer and I have a whole set of the "visual quickstart" guides on my shelf. I use at least one of them everyday. A definite buy for software developers!
Rating:
Summary: The "Visual QuickStart" books benefit experienced user most
Review: The "Visual Quickstart" books (like this one) are great for users and developers that are already using the software and need a cookbook of helper hints to get the little annoying tasks done that you just can't seem to figure out on your own. It's a great series of books! This book in particular is great for users and developers of PDF documents that are definitely experienced in using the Acrobat 4.0 product, but just need a little help to get some of the tedious and quirky tasks done. The first time user may benefit, but will be lost in the book until they start interacting with the software on their own. I am a software developer and I have a whole set of the "visual quickstart" guides on my shelf. I use at least one of them everyday. A definite buy for software developers!
Rating: 
Summary: All you need to create PDFs
Review: The author begins Chapter 16 with these words: "The World Wide Web has transformed the entire world into an ugly HTML-based society of patiently waiting-for-connection Internet junkies." If this resonates with you, perhaps the book will as well. I have been using Acrobat 4.0 for about a year, and found the book oocasionally internally inconsistent -- and rather uneven. Parts are written at a level for a basic clerical person, and others presuppose a background in the array of Adobe graphics software products (for example, there is a full chapter devoted to "Working with Adobe Illustrator") and in printing terminology. I had bought the book mainly because I wanted a physical book to refer to instead of the on-screen help that Adobe provides with Acrobat 4.0, and because I needed some help with Adobe Forms -- which Adobe added to Portable Document Format (pdf) in version 1.2 (Acrobat 3.0). Since this book addresses Acrobat 4.0, which supports pdf version 1.3, I expected to at least find mention of Adobe's fdf extension here. After all, the capability does come on the Acrobat 4.0 CD-ROM! Instead I found exactly 12 pages devoted to forms with no mention at all of fdf or forms interaction more complex than you might expect to find in a template-driven web site creation program. Under these circumstances I should not have been surprised to find that the authors tell MS Office users the hard way to use Acrobat. They make no mention of the capability of creating Adobe Acrobat documents via a click on the Adobe icon right on the Word screen, or the specific line to create Adobe Acrobat pdf files in the "file" menu on both Word and Excel, taking you instead through the old-fashioned way: using your printer dialog to set up a "printer" whereby you create a pdp file via a ps file in several steps. There were also a few examples of what I initially viewed as errors of fact, but in reviewing the book recognize as overgeneralization rather than outright errors. I suppose any author is entitled to a few of these. I tried to figure out who might REALLY benefit from this book. If you're heavily into printing on paper and non-web oriented desktop publishing, and view the most serious industry competition as a battle between QuarkXPress and Adobe products, maybe this is for you. If you live in an Adobe world, your PC isn't networked (so you exchange files via "sneaker brigade"), you don't use the web much, and for the most part you have avoided Microsoft and UNIX software, again, maybe this is a book you would find helpful. If you use Microsoft Office 2000, or most any UNIX-based software, or are coming at the subject from a web orientation, you may find yourself as frustrated with this book as I was. Only that I did pick up (buried deep in paragraphs, generally) four little bits of information I may be able to use in the future kept me from rating this book one star. And really, finding four usable pieces of information in an entire book didn't make the book a particularly good use of time or money for me.
Rating: 
Summary: Useful as quick entry point, but no more
Review: The book is useful as a way of getting an overview of Acrobat 4 commands, but is short on the concepts behind them. I found a number of errors on the Windows side of things (p26 - A double click is needed to view pages, not a single click; p48 - EPS files will not work as a basis for 2+ page PDFs; p96 - incorrect illustration; p132 - over-complicated radio-button technique for form). I wasn't convinced that the authors had spent enough time getting to know Acrobat 4, which is a good product.
Rating: 
Summary: Woefully inadequate and misleading.
Review: This book, despite its modest cost, is probably the worst I've come across for what is a very useful application for creating cross-platform e-documents. What is does do well is self evident given a little time and patience with the program; what you would like to know about is incorrect; and what you don't need to know about is gone into at great length. In short - a particularly useless and frustrating book written by someone who should know better, since he is one of Adobe's top-rated authors. I wouldn't like to be reading their least-able if this is what is reckoned to be of merit. To be fair, even Adobe can't make much of a job with their own in-house publications and their included help-guide, which, although comprehensive, is incredibly irritating to wade through. Someday - Somebody - Somewhere, will be able to produce a book, or books that will actually tell us how to use all those great applications without us having to sweat blood. Meanwhile... I'm not holding my breath.
Rating:
Summary: All you need to create PDFs
Review: This took the mystery about creating PDFs away from me. It is well organized and provided step-by-step examples that have allowed me to use PDF at work effectively.
Rating:
Summary: Well written, Well orgnized...
Review: When I purchased Acrobat 4, I was disappointed to find that it came with an "on-screen" manual. Not the most useful medium for trying to learn such a program. Feeling the need for a real book, I bought Mr. Alspach's manual and found it far superior to the materials provided by Adobe. It is simply and clearly written from the VERY basics to more sophisticated uses of Acrobat 4. Thanks, Mr. Alspach and Peachpit Press, for another book well done!
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