Customer Reviews

Adobe Acrobat 6.0 Standard Upgrade [Old Version]

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

 

 

"Acrobat 6 Standard" came bundled with my new PC. I tried it for a week but found myself disappointed with it for all the same reasons given in the other unfavorable reviews here--disappointed enough to remove it from my new PC and to replace it with the Acrobat 5 that I'd been using on my old PC.

I haven't much to add to what the other reviewers have said, but I'll go ahead and state the following:

6 is too different from 5 in its menu structure. The difference would be acceptable if the purpose were obvious--say, to make 6's menus better resemble those of other, high-volume applications such as Excel and Word. But the menu differences between 6 and 5 seem to be completely arbitrary.

Many of the sophisticated yet useful features that were standard in 5 are now, evidently, premium in 6. I say "evidently" because can I only assume that these features are available, at extra cost, in the Professional verion of 6. I think one such feature perhaps is "Tools->Locate Web Addresses->Create Web Links from URLs in text". I use that feature all the time in Acrobat 5, but I don't remember seeing it in Acrobat 6 Standard.

I upgraded Acrobat 5 to 6 Standard and found out too late that the function to create PDF forms is no longer included. Of course, I had to remove version 5 first, so now I have no way to edit my existing PDF forms files other than to remove 6 and re-install 5 or upgrade further to Acrobat 6 Professional. Adobe does not make it very clear at all on their website what features of 5 require Professional or are lost with Standard. Other than this big disappointment, I find the user interface modernized and cleaner and more WindowsXP familiar. The bloated Standard takes longer to open/load than 5 - wonder how much longer 6P will take! Another annoyance are the Office toolbars for PDF functions which don't behave themselves by staying put or staying closed and insist on opening as a separate toolbar row.

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.

Since, for some unknown reason, Adobe doesn't offer a direct upgrade path from Acrobat 3 to Acrobat 6, I had to buy the Acrobat 5 Upgrade merely so I could qualify for a free upgrade to Acrobat 6. Not only is this silly of Adobe, it's also expensive. Instead of buying an Acrobat 6 package, sticking my old Acrobat 3 CD into the drive, and continuing on my way without further hassle or expense, I had to buy the Acrobat 5 upgrade, go to the Adobe website to find their customer support phone number, call them via their 800 number, get them copies of the receipt, pay a token shipping cost, and then install the new software. What's even worse is that I spent over six weeks trying to do that. Amazon got me the package immediately. But, I had to talk to Adobe (at their expense) five times. The first time was to find out that the upgrade existed and get the instructions for faxing the information to them. Supposedly, my fax never arrived. Then, I had to talk to them about that and get a snail-mail address. Supposedly, THAT package never arrived. Then, with my next call, I managed to get an email address to send the documents to. Again, supposedly, that never arrived. Finally, I talked to a person who had me re-fax just the receipt and my Acrobat 3 serial number. She called me back within a half an hour and we completed the whole process (confirmed my shipping address and got a credit card number for the shipping fee). Besides the hassle I had to go through, this upgrade must have cost Adobe a bundle in phone and support personnel costs. The free upgrade period from Acrobat 5 to 6 is over now, but Adobe really needs to come up with a better way for their old Acrobat 3 customers to upgrade.

Now, regarding the Acrobat 6 program itself, I've only had one problem with a PDF on one web site: it wouldn't open in an IE window. I changed my Acrobat preferences to open it in a separate Acrobat window and it worked fine. I'm not a heavy user of Acrobat, so I'm not an expert, but I haven't noticed any performance issues. There are several complaints of scanner incompatability on Adobe's Support Newsgroups, but my scanner (an Epson 1200U) works just fine.

I do wish Adobe would include some kind of document management capability in Acrobat. Right now, I'm using PaperPort 9 for document management and supplementing it with Acrobat. I had hoped to replace PaperPort with Acrobat, but there's just no way. Acrobat is for document distribution, not document management. If you want a paperless office (or home), you still need PaperPort.

BTW: one person here mentions slowness in "Save As." "Save As" goes through the document and only saves current information. "Save" just dumps the whole thing back in its file (including anything that was deleted). That's why "Save As" will reduce file sizes and is probably why it's slower.

I have investigated the possibility to "upgrade" to v. 6 but found out that more than an upgrade it is a way for Adobe to change its policies and charge more $ to the user. Their products seem to eliminate more and more features as they go along. How can they talk about upgrading when they keep chopping features out? These are more "downgrades" than anything else. I had to decide to stay with v5, at least until it is no longer supported.

Do not purchase this product if you are assuming (especially due to the descriptions on Amazon of this product) that the Batch Processing feature is included. It isn't included; save the $7.00 and just order professional. (or better yet use an open-source product)

As a Realtor who is pushing the envelope, attempting to move to digital file keeping, digital recording, digital faxing, and digital signing, the concept of Adobe Acrobat is extremely helpful. I've been using Adobe Acrobat since version 4. Version 5 was a very useful upgrade, worth every cent. Version 6 was a grand waste of money and has turned into a waste of time. Files take longer to save in Adobe Acrobat 6, but they do end up being smaller, so maybe there is a more advanced compression algorithm at work. Nevertheless, files do take about twice as long to save in the new version.

Furthermore, at least for my line of work, I see no useful additions to the software. The interface looks a little fancier, and a little more advanced with more curved lines and a splash screen with transparency...(everybody together now, "Oooooh, aaaaaaah"). But, at least for my line of work, I have not seen any productivity or security upgrades which make the investment worthwhile. Save yourself the money and stay with version 5.0.

Unfortunately, it seems that the other reviewers' negative comments are right on the money.

Acrobat 6.0 for MACs does not contain a feature that was available in 5.0 and that remains in the PC 6.0. The MAC 6.0 does not have the WebDav feature to allow online editing of a document.

How can it be an "advance" that the MAC version loses a feature that's kept for the PC version?