Thread: Adobe Acrobat Professional v 9.0

Adobe Acrobat's latest version comes in three flavors-Elements, Standard and Professional, which we tested.

The Professional at work
The first thing you notice is its speed; it seems to load much faster. Acrobat 9 Professional consists of three modules Distiller 9 which converts files to the PDF format, the Acrobat application itself, and LiveCycie Designer which helps to build editable XML forms for quick user input. Flash video content can now be inserted into PDF files when generated-a new feature available exclusively in this version. The document permissions that a user can control include restricting document access to only print or read, password protection and encryption.

Collaboration is the new key word with Acrobat-the most useful feature is the ability to add comments and notes to a PDF file. These notes also support cut and paste, so you can easily add references from various websites here. The new Callout tool lets you add location-specific comments, with arrows. Best of all, these are open to anyone who has the free Reader loaded on their system-quite useful for working in groups.

Version 9 introduces portfolios, which can include office documents, pictures and audio and video files along with the PDFs. Thus, with a portfolio and the help of a layout similar to a presentation, one can organize multiple documents together. The viewer can then open files as previews or in the respective applications. However,

an update to Adobe Reader Version 9 is required since other free PDF viewers don't have the capability to view these types of PDF files. Furthermore, Adobe focuses on new functions for collaboration on PDFs via Adobe Server. Innovations also include the importing of videos into PDFs, however Adobe Reader doesn't support formats other than MPEG4. Furthermore, the conversion of video files to Flash video format is only possible with the expensive Pro Extended version of the suite that costs
approximately Rs 68,000.



Performance
We took a look at how version 9 compares with its predecessor in the area of conversion to PDF from different file formats-Word, Excel, PowerPoint and PNG ima,ges. The factors that we took into consideration included the time taken for the conversion process to complete, the compression ratio (calculated as the output file divided by the input file). and the physical memory and CPU resources required. It was a tough race, but Acrobat 9 turned out to be the ultimate winner by just one percentage point.

VIDEOS IN PDFS: If you only want to create PDFs, then you do not really require this program, especially since there are plenty of free virtual PDF printers. For this very reason, Adobe is trying to incorporate more features into the file format. VERDICT: Unless you are an office user, stick with something cheaper. FOR: Acrobat 9 professional is perfect for collaborative work with revision tracking for easy references to past work. AGAINST: It is a tad expensive.