Customer Reviews

Adobe Acrobat Standard 9 [OLD VERSION]

5 star:		(15)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(15)

 

 

Acrobat 8 has never integrated with Office 2007, or worked right with my scanner, so I foolishly bought Acrobat 9 in the hope it would be an improvement. It's not.

It seems Adobe simply focused on jamming more features into an already bloated and buggy application making things even worse. The office 2007 integration *still* does not work--even after spending hours trying the suggested solutions from Adobe. Beware, even for this $300 product, Adobe CHARGES for any phone support beyond basic installation help.

In addition to not working with Office 2007, Acrobat 9 is slow, throws up frequent error messages, and leaves part of itself running even after you shut it down which keeps Windows from shutting down without clicking past an "Acrobat has stopped responding" message. I also had trouble with Adobe's finicky product activation.

Memo to Adobe: More features are useless if the basics don't work reliably. People don't want products that take 20 minutes to install, forever to load, require hours of searching for and trying various support solutions to no avail, throw up frequent error messages, etc.

Someone else needs to come along (Google are you listening?) and derail Adobe's PDF train with a simple, reliable product that's more like Acrobat used to be in the old days (say version 5). For the 3% of the PDF users who actually *need* all the extra obscure publishing features, they can still buy Adobe's buggy bloatware. The rest of us just want reliable basic PDF support that works with the current applications and standards.

I've been using Adobe Acrobat for many years - basically couldn't live without it since I deliver 99% of my work to clients in PDF format. Version 5 has been great - stable, fast, does the job. Every time a new version is released I try it out. Version 6 was horrid and a crash-fest. Version 7 was a bit better, but slow and bloated. Version 8 was OK, but did not see a compelling reason to change from v5. Version 9 is the first time I've been willing to shell out more bucks. After a using it for about a month, I'm very happy I did.

One of my main uses for Adobe is creating PDF forms. Version 9 is the first time that you can set up a form that can be saved to disk by a user, provided he/she is using version 8 or above of the reader. Finally!! Granted, this feature should have been implemented years ago, but appreciate that it is finally here. The form wizard actually works in this version - saves lots of time in setup.

Creating PDFs is speedy and works well from every application I've used (WordPerfect, Word, Excel, several others). I always use the Distiller to create a PDF - print to disk as a PS file, then run it through the Distiller. Takes one extra step (versus using the create PDF button that is enabled in some apps) but it works 100% of the time, and allows you to tweak how the PDF is created.

I'm a bit miffed that I did not qualify for the upgrade price - you need version 6 or later, and I'm using 5. I think some type of discount should have been offered, or at least a free training book.

Installation is straightforward. Be sure to remove Version 5 from your PC before you install version 9. It should do it for you, but the process runs best if you remove it first, then do a clean install of v9.

So far no crashes or conflicts with other apps. Running it on a dual core PC under XP (SP3) and 2GB RAM. Not as speedy to load as version 5, but nearly as fast (and MUCH better than previous versions). Very nice update to the user interface - easy to find everything if you're familiar with older versions.

I went with the Standard version. The Pro and Pro plus (or whatever they call it) have more functions, but none that are important to the type of work I do. There's a good feature matrix on the Adobe site that explains the differences.

My main complaint is the price. At this price point, they should include one of their training guides, rather than ask you to shell out another $40 for a manual. Also, limiting the upgrade discount to just the most recent versions is a bit stingy on their part. But it works well, and for me, has already paid for itself. 4.5 stars!

I purchased Adobe Acrobat 6 a while back and it never worked (creating a PDF file) on my Windows XP system. I recently purchased a new laptop with Vista and I thought I would give version 9 a try. What a mistake. First the program worked fine, then Adobe sent a 9.1 release and ever since then it messed-up my whole computer. Every time now I right-click on any Icon on my computer, an Adobe Acrobat installer dialog box pops-up and acts like it's trying to re-install the program.

If I open the program and try to make a PDF of the file, it says of any file type that it is unrecognized. Also, every time I start-up or reboot my computer, once the computer starts up it says that the computer needs to be re-booted again so the 'upgrade' can take effect. I just click no, but even after removing this software and apply Norton System Works and System Mechanic 8 to clean up the registry, that re-boot pop-up is still there. I've now have two bad experiences with this program in two different versions.

I also get the dreaded dialog box on right-click: "Please wait while windows configures adobe acrobat 9" If you Google this you'll see over 194,000 people have Googled in an attempt to solve this problem. And there is no solution only outrage and frustration from people on the internet

Customer service with Adobe is bait and switch. You'll never get an answer. The only time I got a response from them was to say that it's Window's fault and there's nothing they can do about it.

I urge you to buy a competitor's PDF creation software. They fooled me twice, so shame on me.

I recently heard about and downloaded the free Foxit Reader 3.0 and PrimoPDF, to use instead of Acrobat Reader and Adobe Acrobat respectively.

Wow, wow, wow.

Those two freeware programs take up so much fewer system resources while performing 95% of the same functions, for FREE!

Reader 9.0 has especially become a bloated monster, and with it gone I noticed a substantial speed improvement with Firefox. Overall my Windows XP Professional system is now much more stable, and faster as well. It's almost as huge an improvement as I got when I removed all the Norton software, even.

The installation of Adobe Acrobot Pro 9 Trial Version took so long that I sadly decided to cancel the installation half way through. It was almost like installing a new Windows! I decided it's better to stick to the good old CutePDF Writer for now which is by the way free and less than 2MB in size (not 326MB). I use a WindowsXP with 2GB of ram and a 3.4GHz Intel Pentium4 processor.

Every time I open a pdf after installing acrobat 9 pro., I get a message stating that my system has changed and that the software needs to be activated again. Attempts to reactivate online result in a reply message that the software is activated on more than one system, which it is not. I then activate by telephone, successfully, but the very next time I open a pdf, I get the same message that the system has changed. I have been stuck in this infinite loop for about a month. I have contacted adobe four times by telephone regarding this matter, to no avail. At one point, the adobe rep. researched a little further and told me I would receive an email within 48 hours with guidance on how to solve this problem. The email never came and the next telephone call to adobe was as useless as the rest. A word of advice to others considering upgrading to Acrobat 9 - seek other document alternatives; you will be happy you did.

Adobe Acrobat Standard 9.0 ..Software is not only measured by what it will do for productivity, but how well the makers do with problem solving. I admit that I did read that this company had changed its customer service policies, and that this was done, not with great customer service in mind. The statements I read are true and it is bad. Very very bad.
If you change your hard drive, reload your OS (format the drive) this will all count as a new installation and be called a whole other machine. You will have to go through endless reps before any actual help. Be prepared for a long wait. Be prepared to give out personal information. If purchased through the Adobe store front things get worst yet. We needed to download on a faster connection and install it on a machine we use for accounting. It will not let you save the download. It will only install on the download machine. We have been requesting our money back for a month. We had to turn it over to the credit card company. At least if you use Amazon there is a return policy that actually functions. In the future I will be more aware of what the down side is before I purchase a product. There are other pdf makers and I intend to use a different software if I ever have to format or change my drive or machine again. Hope this helps someone else

Support for Acrobat 9 is terrible. Adobe does not respond to on-line requests for help. Your request just vanished into the web. Phone calls to official Adobe support lines are worse. You'll wait 20 minutes or more before someone answers. Then the problems is not fixed, although you will be told is was fixed. Then you must call back - and wait another half hour for an answer - just to get brushed-off again.

Really, really bad support. BAD.

I rarely bother with reviews, but I am totally fed up with Acrobat 9. It is constantly requiring me to reload, and reloading takes forever. I use it on two computers (allowed by the license agreement) running Windows 7 Starter, and XP Home. Both have problems. On the XP computer, every time I run it, it resets my default printer to a picture printer that isn't even plugged in.

I'm constantly getting updates to the software, and they also take forever, but they don't seem to solve any of my problems.

This software does not even deserve one star. It deserves none!

If you create a lot of PDFs, do not under any circumstances buy version 9. Stick with version 8. If you create several PDF documents and need to leave them all open, in version 8 only one Acrobat window remains open. You can move from document to document by using the control and tab buttons. Your computer works fine. Life is good. It's especially good as sometimes I wind up with the maximum number of documents open (somewhere around 40).

Unfortunately, version 8 recently stopped working properly on my computer so the computer was upgraded to version 9. My computer has been a mess ever since. The programmers at Adobe got the mistaken idea that Acrobat would be more efficient if each created PDF opened in a completely new window. Imagine the efficiency of your computer when you have 40 PDFs open in addition to an Internet browser (or two), e-mail, word processing software, maybe a spreadsheet and/or database program, etc. My computer's efficiency plummeted.

Worse, Acrobat often suddenly stops working. Sometimes I can have 20 or 25 PDFs open at one time; sometimes only seven. Sometimes that annoying illegal operation error message box appears; sometimes the program just shuts down without warning.

My work with PDFs mainly involves printing files to PDF. Occasionally, after creating a PDF, I will need to add a text box. With version 8, I could set my default font size and color. With version 9, I cannot; which means that every time I need to add a text box, I have to waste the time changing both. (It might not seem like a big deal on the surface, when you have to do it over and over and over, it gets old fast. It really is time-consuming.)

At least I can always tell when Acrobat is acting up, (i.e., too many files are open), because when I go to add a text box, the spot on the properties tool bar where one changes the font size becomes a black rectangle. Also, I use the alternate and tab buttons to jump between programs. If you press the alternate button and then the tab button, a box with all your open programs will appear. You keep pressing the tab button to get to the program you want. (Just FYI, alternate, shift, tab does the same thing in reverse.) When Acrobat is acting up, the box will not appear. My computer will simply jump between programs-- backwards.

While doing some research on why all these PDFs started opening in separate windows, I came across a forum on the subject, possibly at [...]. Many people complained. The forum had been closed with a note from the administrator that the message had been received loud and clear that multiple windows were bad. I don't know if a fix will be made just for this issue, but I expect the problem will be corrected for version 10. If you can wait until then, you should.