Adobe Acrobat 9 Pro Extended product reviews

(This review is based on Acrobat 9 Pro - Mac version)
Whereas Acrobat 8 Pro offered significant improvements across many (if not most) features of the program, the big focus for Acrobat 9 Pro is document collaboration and review - featuring easy form creation and distribution.

The basic PDF creation as well as most design & print industry features are much the same as in version 8. Support for the finalised PDF/X-4 standard is part of Acrobat 9. There is improved support for embedded Flash and FLV Flash video. Acrobat 9 launches faster than previous versions.

Most common tasks can be accessed from the main toolbar via drop-down menus.
The 'Forms Editing Mode' replaces the Forms toolbar with a dedicated workspace for building and editing forms and you can preview before finalising a form. There is also a new Forms wizard. Unfortunately, LiveCycle Designer doesn't come with Mac Acrobat 9 (a powerful visual forms design and scripting application that ships bundled with Windows Acrobat 9). So Mac users who need the features of LiveCycle Designer might just have to run the windows version.

Check out Acrobat.com, where you can make a free Adobe ID to create, store, and share PDF files. The distribute wizard in Acrobat 9 lets you upload forms to Acrobat.com and have email links to those forms sent to your clients - feedback data is returned to your computer and Acrobat 9 automatically collects it. NOTE: the free account is limited (but still useful) and the paid subscriptions are currently only available in North America.

Overall, if you are using Acrobat 7 (or earlier) or if you are just starting with PDF creation and document collaboration in the workplace, then Acrobat 9 is definitely worth considering. It's also worth a look if document collaboration and review or form data collection is important. However, if you already have Acrobat 8 and use it primarily for design or print related work, you might find limited advantages in upgrading to version 9.

In a nutshell:
If you just want a program to convert documents to PDF, then Acrobat Standard is probably all you need. But, if you need better document security, online collaboration, inclusion of rich media, or dynamic forms - then Acrobat Pro or Acrobat Pro-extended might provide a good solution.

Acrobat 9 Standard
    •  Create and distribute PDF files preserving original formatting
    •  Scan documents to PDF
    •  Create forms from paper or electronic documents
    •  Easily exchange feedback using the commenting tools
    •  Intuitive, user-friendly interface
Acrobat 9 Pro
    •  Everything in Acrobat 9 Standard
    •  Additional tools to protect documents
    •  Additional tools to enhance information exchange
    •  Ability to include Acrobat Reader user's in document reviews and workflow
    •  Create dynamic forms
    •  Add video in FLV or H.264 format for playback even in the free Acrobat Reader 9 (possibly 8 too, not sure about that)
Acrobat 9 Pro - Extended
    •  Everything in Acrobat 9 Pro
    •  Add video from various formats by converting to FLV
    •  Add rich media to slide presentations (using the included 'Adobe Presenter')
    •  Convert 2D and 3D designs to PDF
    •  Combine multiple CAD formats in a single assembly (using the included 'Adobe 3D Reviewer')
    •  Create PDF maps using imported geospatial files

Like with all previous versions of Adobe Acrobat this is the application to use to make PDF files ot of all your documents, from whatever format you have, you can turn them into PDF's using the Adobe PDF Printer Driver, or if you have a supported program like the Microsoft Office suite to export directly to PDF using the the Adobe Acrobat add-in.

However creating PDF's from your favourite documents is just the beginning of what Acrobat 9.0 is capable of. Acrobat 9 has flash support builtin for more dymanic and interactive PDF's, internal scanner and OCR support to allow you to scan and convert your documents to text type PDFs.

A feature of Acrobat 9 Pro which I really like is the ability to embed FLV or H.264 video for playback inside the PDF document. This is improved upon by the ability in Adobe Acrobat 9 Pro Extended by the ability to convert various video formats into FLVs for embedding in your Acrobat PDF document.

Another great inclusion in Acrobat 9 Pro Extended is the Adobe Presenter. This is a addin to Microsoft Powerpoint (so if you don't have this then, it's not much good to you) which will allow you to create any manner of interactive presentations, such as quizzes, or by capturing the movement on screen and by recording your voice at the same time you can create some wonderful video tutorials. Once you have created these they can be published to a variety of media including Adobes own Adobe Connect Pro, CD or HDD. The CD and HDD formats are published as Flash files which can be played via your internet browser so they could even be published to a web site for online tutorials.

Once again adobe has release another great version of their Acrobat product and like all their other products have greatly improved on the previous versions in the process.