Adobe Acrobat 6.0 Standard Edition

Rating:
Summary: Warning!!! Danger if using Office 2003 Windows XP!!!
Review: I love Acrobat. It won't work with Office 2003 (xp home on computer). Get a "unable to print to pdf" error upon installation. Check the Adobe homepage, it's a problem they're aware of (their recommended "fix" was to turn OFF "system restore" (which deletes ALL previous restore points!) and to edit the system path variable (also "icky" if no system restore to help out)

Don't do it........don't buy it....I tried the upgrade to 6.0.1 as well.........didn't work......wait for the fix in the next version....Acrobat is good...they'll fix it.....just have to be patient :-)

p.s. works like a champ in MS Office XP professional (not Office 2003)

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Summary: Acrobat 6.0 Standard is Slow and Lacks Critical Features!
Review: I am a big fan of Adobe. I am a Photshop addict and I use Acrobat frequently. However, I am very disappointed in the way Adobe has positioned Adobe Acrobat 6.0 Standard Edition. It seems as if Adobe intentionally crippled this product. Perhaps they did this so that corporations can deploy a version of Acrobat that doesn't make it as easy to edit unprotected PDFs, as is possible with 5.0. (This is a generous interpretation. Some people may conclude it's simply a bald-faced attempt at boosting revenue by forcing purchase of the more expensive Pro version.) I feel that the advertising material for this product does not fairly describe the limited feature set.

The first thing you notice is that the program is incredibly slow to start. This program should start as fast or faster than a word processor (i.e., Microsft Word), since it is used constantly mainly to read files.

Once you get over the interminable wait and have the program on your screen you immediately notice the deficiencies in the software. Acrobat 6.0 is missing many critical feature of Acrobat 5.0, including the catalog (index) and touch-up of objects (images). In addition (and amazingly), the pop-up search box is gone! To search inside a PDF requires launching an annoying pane that reduces the size of the window in which the PDF is displayed. Overall, I can't see that the product provides any enhanced usability. Even the "Read Out Loud" function is unusable because the speech is garbled. More irritations: The icons are too large, taking up excessive screen real estate. The column select function is missing; this was handy to properly select text in multi-column documents. (NOTE ADDED APRIL 1, 2004: After using the product for a while, I'm not sure that column select is really necessary in 6.0. Text selection may be more intelligent in this version of the program.)

NOTE ADDED APRIL 1, 2004: After using this product for several months, I have learned to like the was the search feature operates. Yes, invoking search does cause a large pane to pop-up on the right side of your screen, making it hard to read your document which is resized smaller. However, the results list provided by search gives you the context in which the search term is located and it is easy to jump to the desired point in your document. There are times that this type of search is much more useful than the jump through the document (Microsoft Word-like) search in Acrobat 5.0. However, the lack of the catalog (index) feature in Acrobat 6.0 is a major, major disadvantage. Adobe -- if you are listening -- the next version of Acrobat should have all three search capabilities: (1) catalog as in 5.0, (2) jump through the document search as in 5.0, and (3) results list search as in 6.0. For any given search situation, one of these search approaches will be superior. You really need all three. One final point: Integration of Acrobat 6.0 with Internet Explorer may be slightly better than for 5.0. Nevertheless, there are still times when running Acrobat 6.0 inside IE will hang your computer.

Rating:
Summary: Very mixed feelings...
Review: I use PDFs a lot and I must say that quite often I turn to Free PDF software to actually do the tasks that Acrobat fails to do. One area I have always had a problem with is the formatting of some documents in size and sometimes Acrobat simply fails to recognize them and so I switch to the Free PDF software which has no problems doing this and is easier to use.

However if you are a pro PDF maker who wants to add sigs and links and notes and chapters and all the other function tags including security tags then I recommend this product hands down as the best one. I just find that it is not always the best PDF software package in the world, but a good one all the same.

I would not recommend buying this one just to make standard PDF files alone. If you want to touch up those file then this is what you need to do that right.

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Summary: Adobe slows my latest centrino 1.8Mhz, 1 GB memory to 286
Review: Yes, I've suspected as much. Adobe have been the main drivers for microsoft and intel in their battle for "hearts and minds" to get you to upgrade old equipment. The argument goes "Well I kn ow its slow but I just need a faster processor, extra memory etc" to run photoshop, or adobe product x.

I have previously been running acrobat 5.0 on a 800MhZ pentium in windows 2000 with 256 MBytes memory and it was working pretty fast. So now that I have the latest centrino with 1GB memory and XP and Acrobat 6.0 professional is it unreasonable to expect things to work a little quicker!??

Well I have just converted a 55 page *text* document (note - no images) and it has taken 10 minutes on this latest hardware. Thats not impressive! As soon as I start the conversion *everthing* else stops (I have been unable to achieve this level of hammering on my machine with 3D rendering, scientific numerical equation solvers you name it). It eats the whole ram to do the conversion so *nothing* else can work while it does its business. The processor is not flatout but somehow is unable to do much else for 10 mins while we wait for Mr. adobe and his latest products.

What are abode playing at? How can you release upgrades that work that much slower than the previous version?!! I get it, now I know that adobe are conspiring with wintel to make us buy faster computers, it just cannot be this slow.

Dont waste your money.

Rating:
Summary: Avoid. Go with Scansoft PDF converter instead
Review: Too expensive and not good.
A better and cheaper way to manipulate PDF is to go with Scansoft PDF converter...for $49 the Scansoft product is much better.

check this out:http://www.scansoft.com/pdfconverter/

Rating:
Summary: Save Your Money
Review: I've used past versions of Adobe and while not particularly impressed I maaged to get some things done. I've had to re-type an entire 12-page PDF document with this version because the resulting "converted" version which is in table format is no more than gobbledygook (text prints in one table column rather than the 8 columns alloted). I've been everywhere short of the moon trying to find solutions to this problem but I think I'll have better luck finding ocean front property in Arizona than I will any viable solution any time soon. I'm going to invest in an OCR program, scan the documents that I need in and then let the OCR program do the rest. Anything has to be better than this frustration.

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Summary: New User Hints
Review: I purchased this program due to the ability to have hyperlinks to other documents. New users should read the README file to find out how you ensure that the program is set to convert the hyperlinks you identified in the original file. One thing you cannot do is to create a file where a hyperlink is pointing to another existing pdf file that has embedded links in it. On your original document, you can enter the "hyperlink to an existing pdf file with embedded links" -- and continue to enter more text on your original document. It is not until you save your file that program rejects the link you entered to an existing pdf file with embedded links. The program just quits on you and you have no idea why -- especially because "the bad hyperlink entry" was entered some time in the past. I spent hours trying to figure out what was wrong with what I was doing. I did not find anything about this situation in the Help files.

I am using the program to create files that are a part of a corporate training program. This program has great potential to be used for creating documents that are part of self-learning training courses.

As others have stated, it does take a long time for the program to create the pdf file. Plan on having other projects to work on - like phone calls you want to make - while you are waiting for the program to do the Adobe conversion.

Rating:
Summary: Stick with Acrobat 5.0
Review: I generally like Adobe products, but this one does not get my praise. Yes, it does what it is supposed to do, but good grief it's slow. I have both Acrobat 5.0 and 6.0 installed on my dual booting P4 system ( 5.0 under Windows Me and 6.0 under XP), and I can tell you for a fact that Acrobat 5.0 will rip out a PDF file way faster than the 6.0 version. Also, the new watermarking system under 6.0 is OK, but they should have retained the older, more straight forward method too. Having to first convert a graphic or text page to a PDF file to use as a watermark is rediculous. The older method of just typing in the text you want was perfectly adequate for most purposes and a heck of a lot simpler. I have also noticed that there are error messages about fonts not being found on my system. This is really strange, since I have the same fonts installed under both operating systems. I hope Adobe comes out with a free upgrade to fix the little quirks, but franky Acrobat 5.0 is really the better product in my opinion. Unless you like slow software or just have to have the "latest and greatest" stick with Acrobat 5.0 and save your money for other things.

Rating:
Summary: Don't Even Bother
Review: Thank god I downloaded the trial version of 6.0 before investing cash in this one. Man is this version slow! Also editing a document is almost impossible. Each time I tried I got a message saying something about the font not being on my system. The font was Times New Roman!! Adobe needs to squash this release and give everyone a refund or a free fix. I was forced to uninstall this piece of crap and re-install Acrobat 4.0 which works much better.

Rating:
Summary: Slow, slow slow. Poor saving & editing. SAVE YOUR MONEY!!!
Review: This upgrade has what you would expect from Adobe as far as viewing documents. Editing and saving are a far different story.
They've made some nifty improvements that are very nice, especially for reading an eBook. Beyond that, editing is a pain. Saving is close to impossible, if you, like me, have a number of font files on your computer. (Just to be fair, I have over 10,000 fonts on my computer, however, only 350 of them are installed in Windows. The others are only called when needed.) Adobe takes the time, everytime that you save a pdf, to find every font that's ever been on your computer, no matter where the location. I've gone to the website, and tried the suggestions they offer regarding fixing this, however none of them worked AT ALL. I'm reinstalling my old copy of Acrobat 5. I'll take the step backwards in technology, as little as it's worth. Adobe, I've not impressed at all. Everything that you've ever done is incredible, but 6.0 is one of the worst excuses for a upgrade that I've ever seen. Compare to Windows ME over Windows 98. (old, but good example of retrogress.) SAVE YOUR MONEY and wait for an acceptable upgrade or revision.