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Review of Adobe Acrobat 9 Pro Extended
Acrobat 9 Review

About.com Rating 5

By James Marshall, About.com

Acrobat.com

Acrobat.com is a set of services offered by Adobe. Once you sign up, you’ll get 5 gigabytes of free storage space.

You can use Acrobat.com to store your documents. As mentioned previously, it is also an ideal location to store forms. You’ll also find an online word processor called Buzzword.

You can convert five documents to PDF on Acrobat.com. After that, you’ll need to pay for the service. However, that isn’t necessary if you have Acrobat 9 on your machine.

Acrobat.com becomes most interesting when you use it to collaborate on documents. You can share your documents with others simply be emailing an invitation.

There are tools that will help you track who has viewed or downloaded files. Users may also need to sign up for a free account, depending on options you specify for your documents.

But Acrobat.com offers so much more than mere document storage. You can conference with co-workers via Acrobat.com. It even gives you the ability to share your desktop with others.

Adobe may be arriving late to the online software game. However, it is clear that Adobe has spent a lot of time refining Acrobat.com. And the site’s features are nothing short of impressive.

Acrobat.com takes the best of services like Google Docs and WebEx and improves the features. For example, with synchronized document view, you can make sure that collaborators are on the same page—literally.

You can use Acrobat.com even without the latest version of Acrobat. But, the combination of web site and software is ideal.

Other Improvements

There are plenty of features in Acrobat 9 that will wow old and new users alike. And, older features also get improved. Among the other improvements to Acrobat 9 are the following.

Stronger security. Acrobat offers 256-bit encryption on documents.

Redaction tools. Easily remove sensitive data from your documents.

Document comparison. You can compare documents at a granular level.

Improved tracking. Track who has viewed or edited your document.

Bottom Line

If you rely on PDF files to get work done, Acrobat 9 will greatly improve your workflow. You’ll also appreciate that it makes your PDF documents more interactive and organized.

Unlike some upgrades, the upgrade to Acrobat 9 from earlier versions is worth the expense. Thanks to impressive new features, you’ll see the value in the upgrade immediately. And improvements in old features will remind you of the value over time.

Of course, Acrobat 9 is not without its flaws. When sharing files, you’ll get the most when recipients are using Adobe Reader 9.

Also, Acrobat 9 comes in three versions. You’ll want to compare the versions carefully. Otherwise, you may miss out on some of the features you want. Only one version is Mac-compatible, so Mac users will miss out on advanced features.

Some may harp on Acrobat 9’s steep price tag. However, it is easy to justify given Acrobat’s rich feature set and flexibility.
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