Average Rating: 
Rating: - Adobe Acrobat 5
Have you ever tried to send someone a file, only to find out that they don't have the same program you do? What about, them getting a copy where all of the formatting has changed? Maybe you've asked them to revise, and you have to sort through and find all the corrections? All of these things have happened to me, and I'll tell you it's time to get Adobe Acrobat 5!Adobe Acrobat 5, has the amazing capability of being viewed across platforms, so that you'll never need to worry that your Mac friend can't view the file created on your PC (or vice-versa). You also don't need to worry about different programs messing up your formatting, unauthorized users messing with your documents, or different programs refusing to open your documents! All the other party needs, is the FREE Adobe Acrobat Reader. Acrobat is simple to learn and use. All you need to do is create your file in your favorite program, print the document (using the Acrobat Distiller printer included) and you have a new PDF file. Using this program you can convert virtually any file to PDF! Once in PDF format, set your security options, and send away. You can even use advanced features such as electronic signatures and highlighting, to work in an editorial environment (others will need the full Acrobat to view these kinds of additions). Documentation for Acrobat is terrible! If you are unsure that you can learn Acrobat, I would recommend buying a companion guide for this product (Excellent product is: Adobe Acrobat 5 Classroom in a Book). Once you begin using PDF, you will find that it is so practical and useful you won't know how you got by without it...
Rating: - Nuclear Specialist - Procedure Writer
I just started using Adobe Acrobat 5.0 because my LAN environment has many different video and printer drivers. Documents opened on one PC would look different when opened on another PC. The total page count would vary from one PC to another. I use WordPerfect 9.0 in a Windows NT 4.0 environment to maintain procedures. WordPerfect is sensitive to the different printer drivers and PCs. The continual upgrades of printers and PCs challenged me to find some way to minimize the impact of different fonts/printers/drivers/video cards, etc. Acrobat is not as friendly to WordPerfect as it is to Word so I have to manually reestablish links (bookmarks) when files are updated.Once a file is in .pdf format, it behaves as expected. The look from one PC to another is the same. Acrobat's search capabilities, security options and ease-of-use are also strong points. All these things together convinced me that selecting Adobe Acrobat was a good decision.
Rating:  - Essential software for your PC
Along with Microsoft Office, Adobe Acrobat 5.0 is the only other piece of software I own that I consider essential. This component - which includes the all-important writing facilty - is a 'must have' for anyone creating document-centric content that is either going to be either (a) posted on the web, or (b) circulated for review and comment.Acrobat's portable data file ('PDF') output is as close to a lingua franca as you're going to get in computerdom. Pretty much the entire population has the Acrobat Reader. For those that don't, you can easily direct them to a download. Although the software has many different options, the standard settings work straight out of the box. It integrates directly into your Office XP software via embedded macros. To create a PDF document out of, say, a Word ".doc" file, you just click on the little 'Convert to Adobe PDF' icon that will now appear on a new toolbar at the top of your Office applications. From there, it's a snap. All software should be this easy. Another value-added advantage - the resulting PDF will almost always be smaller than your original Office-based document, making distribution less of a burden on your bandwidth-challenged friends and co-workers. For example, this morning I took a graphics-intensive 1.9 Mb Word file through the conversion process and ended up with a PDF of 700 Kb. Your mileage may vary, of course, and the biggest factor will be the nature of your content. Still though, I've never seen Acrobat become part of the problem by increasing the size of an already too-big document. This software will pay for itself almost immediately.
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