Adobe Acrobat 7.0 Professional review:1 stars (BEWARE - massive compatibility issues) - That's right if you have fillable forms created in a previous version and expect to change them, your out of luck. I thought compatibility was the cornerstone of Acrobat.

Our firm does over $300 Million worth of business a year. We thought that Acrobat Professional ability to create fillable forms that could be shared, updated, and filled out by clients was a blessing. We not have dozens of worthless forms. And then there's the embarrassment when a client with Acrobat 7 can't fill out a form. THINK OF THE COST!

Adobe's site doesn't even mention the issue (although, their site search and help system is so poor that it may be their somewhere - who knows.)

At first, I thought I was doing something wrong. But, when I called support I was told that forms were not compatible. The service person then told me that she thought there might be a fix. However, without a service plan we'd have to pay to talk to Technical Support. We paid good money for this software (we buy multiple licenses) and only had this version for two days.

Considering the magnitude of this issue. I'm guessing there are other major problems with this release of Acrobat..

Adobe should fire its entire staff of software developers and the arrogant managers who let this software hit the market without providing fully functional compatibility.


5 stars (So Far, So Good) - This is actually my review for the upgrade product, but I can't seem to edit my original review there to add my update. So, I'm posting it here just so it's available online:

So far, I'm very pleased with this upgrade from my Adobe Acrobat Standard 6.0 to Adobe Acrobat Professional 7.0. The installation process went flawlessly and everything still works. Also, this version seems to start up MUCH faster than the previous version. It might be due to the "Adobe Acrobat Speed Launcher" which is now in my XP Home Startup Group, but since that doesn't seem to lengthen my Windows boot process, it's transparent, and welcome, to me. A couple of other very welcome changes are that 1) Acrobat appears to have linked into Windows Explorer: using the Thumbnail view, Windows Explorer now displays the first page of PDFs instead of just the generic Acrobat logo, and 2) the Organizer tool gives Acrobat the ability to do some PDF-related document management. Combined, these two capabilities might give enough functionality to let me stop using Scansoft's PaperPort for my document management needs and just use Acrobat. I'll keep looking into it.

UPDATE: After working with Acrobat as my PDF document manager for about a week and having gone through its entire help file (793 pages), I've decided to use it instead of my previous Scansoft PaperPort 9/OmniPage Pro 14 setup. It's not the best in the world, but it's workable. My document management needs are simple: I need to scan in my receipts and account statements to PDF format, OCR them so they're searchable, and manage them so I can find them. For various reasons that are unimportant here, Scansoft has irritated me into trying alternatives: Adobe Acrobat appears to be it. I can use Acrobat's Create PDF function to scan my documents and OCR them. I can then use its Organizer to see those PDFs in one of three ways: 1) grouped under various History folders, 2) organized into a directory tree with options to set up Favorite folders, or 3) in various collections that I can produce which include links to documents of my choice. For text searching across my disk, I still use Copernic Desktop Search (free) as I did with Scansoft (though I could set up a Search Index in Acrobat, instead). My only complaints are that 1) the scanning/OCR process is slower in Acrobat since it opens and closes my scanner's interface for each page (instead of leaving it open), 2) Acrobat's OCR results aren't as accurate as Scansoft's, and 3) if I scan to a Searchable Image, Acrobat doesn't give me an opportunity to correct Suspect words. If I scan to Formatted Text & Graphics, I can edit Suspect words, but I end up with Acrobat's attempt to recreate the document instead of an actual picture of it with searchable text hidden behind it. Oh, well. I can live with that since it will allow me to get rid of two applications and the PDF it produces is about half the size of what I was getting with Scansoft.

For those interested, my upgrade process is below:

The first thing I did was uninstall my previous copy of Acrobat (version 6, standard). I did this through Start | Control Panel | Add or Remove Programs and uninstalled all the Acrobat stuff in the reverse order I installed it. I then rebooted (just to be sure) and ran this version's SETUP program. After I entered this version's serial number, it asked me for my previous version's CD for verification (it also gave me the option of verifying my upgrade status by phoning Adobe). I put the CD in the drive, it recognized it, and finished the installation. It then prompted me to activate the product over the internet (which I did without problem). Again, just to be sure, I rebooted (which wasn't necessary), and started up Acrobat. It immediately prompted me to register via the internet (which I did without problem) and asked if I wanted it to automatically check for critical updates. I said "yes" and it went out and got the current 7.0.1 update. I installed that, rebooted (not necessary), and was up and running. I started up all my programs which might use Acrobat files, opened a few of them, and all looks good.

Even though Acrobat's OCR process isn't as accurate or as fast as I'd hoped, everything else looks good. So, I'm giving the product a rating of 5 stars out of 5.5 stars (Improved again. ) - As a user of Acrobat from version 4.0 I have to say that once the use of a new version becomes familiar, there has always been a definite improvement. New users, of course, don’t have any choice about what version they will be using, so comparisons to previous versions is rather pointless for them.

Users of version 7 should be aware that many of 7.0’s features will only be readily available to those using Windows and Acrobat Reader 7.0 to view their documents. Yes, Acrobat Reader 7.0 is now available for Linux, but the installation does not automatically link to any media players installed, and many embedded media files will most probably not be available. Cross document and many other links should also be given due consideration, as they will fail in a Linux installation. If in doubt, check.

The ‘Reduce File Size’ is a useful feature carried over from 6.0. This should be used to downgrade an Acrobat 7.0 file for users who will be using Acrobat Reader 5.0 - which is a lot - to eliminate the alert pop up about Reader incompatibility, even though there may be no incompatibility. This will apply to any .pdf with only images and text, etc. Not doing so has been frequently known to cause a recipient to panic and refuse to open the .pdf. This feature will also have a surprisingly beneficial result for the size of a .pdf. Reducing from 250 - 150 KB. is not unusual. But be sure to check the effect on image quality, if this is an important consideration.

The extra integration with MS-Office is more of a nuisance than a convenience, I find. But maybe casual newbies will appreciate this.

Anyone using Word for publishing purposes should consider InDesign and Framemaker instead, as they are more properly integrated with Acrobat in the first place.

The price of Acrobat has certainly increased dramatically since the days of 4.0. But then it’s no more expensive than a decent colour printer, and is a lot more versatile.

Adobe Acrobat 7.0 Professional Features:
Scanning (Scanners)
Reports (Reporting)
Form
Internet electronic publishing
Computer software (programs)
Office Suite (Suites)
Bundle (Bundles)
Graphics (Graphic)
Multimedia
Professional Design
desktop publishing
desk top publishing
Document Management
OCR (Optical Character Recognition)
CD
Create PDF files with the click of a button from Microsoft applications and AutoCAD
Create a single Adobe PDF document from multiple sources, including portions of Web pages and previously combined Adobe PDF documents
Use the included Adobe LiveCycle Designer 7.0 software to create PDF forms that look like the paper forms they replace
Easily attach source documents such as spreadsheets, multimedia files, images, and drawings to an Adobe PDF document
Enable anyone with free Adobe Reader 7.0 software to use highlighter, sticky note, pen, and other commenting tools

Adobe Acrobat 7.0 Professional is the CD-ROM version. The full version can be purchased by clicking on the "CLICK HERE TO ORDER" button below for around  387.99USD.