Adobe Acrobat X Standard

I had a choice between version 9 and X and made the wrong one. I had been using the trial version of 9 and loved how I could copy information in a PDF as a table and paste into Excel. Version X says it has this great new feature of being able to save a PDF as an Excel file and I thought, "Great!" Uh, not so great. Information that used to copy and paste beautifully into Excel is now a jumbled mess. Some of the columns don't translate correctly, so instead of information spread out over 3 or 4 columns, it's all in one - I can get THAT from the free Adobe Reader. I've tried saving as Excel, saving as a Word docx and copy/pasting but each way has produced poor results. I've tried the copy and paste into Excel from some of the exact PDFs that worked with version 9, so it's definitely this version. Maybe there are some other ways that X is better than 9, but this is a huge thing to not work well.

Lets face it; after two decades, Adobe is running out of ways to make documents seem exciting.

With Acrobat 10, there are three price tiers. Acrobat pro adds the ability to redact information, make forms and embed media files. Acrobat suite tries to vertically integrate Acrobat with technology from Adobe's other products (Flash, Premiere, and Photoshop) to provide an alternative to Powerpoint.

Here's what would excite me: If Adobe took the time to rewrite Acrobat from the bottom up as a 64-bit application. I am running Acrobat on Windows 7 64-bit and it still uses antiquated 32-bit code.

I would also be excited if Adobe added serious multi-threading support since most of today's computers have two, four, six and even more processor cores.

Adobe definitely has not skimped on heavy-handed Digital Rights Management -- the buzzword for its effort to keep you from stealing this software. Adobe runs its Windows background software even when you aren't running Acrobat. The software phones-home any hardware anomalies or license-key issues that might arouse suspicion.

In the past, Acrobat has been accused of being "bloatware"--software that is overly elaborate and innefficient in completing simple tasks. This can be inevitable when you have these giant applications with very long development cycles and inevatible staff turnover.

Acrobat still has the "feel" of being "code-by-committee." In making each new version, the marketers tell the developers the feature-sets they want. Those features get tacked-on. That spark of true innovation and daring originality that defines the startup-phase of a new idea is lost in bureaucracy. Bloatware happens when programming stops being art and stops being invention; Acrobat is long-decended down that slippery slope.

The consequence of aggressive Digital Rights Management and Bloatware is more compatibility problems -- I personally had a dramatic compability problem that caused my mostly-clean Windows 7 install to hang while booting after installing this software. I'll give Adobe the benefit-of-the-doubt and hope I was a rare exception.

If you intend to use this software for exactly the same things you would have used it for in 1999 -- and you are lucky enough to not fall on the wrong side of Adobe's DRM or compatibility issues -- it will work just fine. You can scan documents, merge documents, recognize text and all the great things you were able to do when Desktop PCs seemed as new as iPads.

Here's hoping that Adobe uses Acrobat XI to surprise us with something daring, bare, efficient, inventive, fast and thrilling. For now, Acrobat X is more of a General Motors minivan (and about as reliable) than it is a Corvette.

When I bought a new computer in January 2011 I upgraded from Acrobat 8 Standard to Acrobat X Standard specifically because the product advertises it is compatible with MS Office 2010 and Windows 7. I am running 64-bit Windows 7 Home edition. My MS Office suite is 32-bit. Unfortunately, I can't create .pdfs from any Office products.

I spent 61 minutes on hold waiting to get through to a tech support individual the first time I called. I have since spent several hours with a tech from India on two different occasions where he controls my screen and tries to solve the problem. The individual has had no luck trying to fix the problem. I really don't think the tech support individual knew much more than I did by watching him fumble around on my screen. I think he may have been searching Adobe's support site for answers! He rescheduled for a third time, but failed to contact me. I have now had to reopen the support claim because Adobe considered my case "resolved" since they didn't hear from me for a few days after the tech failed to call back.

I am not sure all the bugs are worked out of the program. I have no problems with any other software on my computer.

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