Adobe Acrobat 8 Professional review

If you want to go a stage further and collaborate on a document in real-time, click on the new Start Meeting command. Expectations were high around this integration between PDF and Flash, but don't get too excited. In practice, you're essentially just using Acrobat as a route to loading your own dedicated Acrobat Connect meeting space URL. To arrange meetings of over 15 people, you'll have to buy a licence.

This is the last straw. As it stands, apart from the new niche digital signing, form handling and shared review aspects of the free Adobe Reader, there are very few compelling reasons to upgrade. What's more, many of the new features and interface changes end up adding to the program's existing bloat and over-complexity. To top it all, the online Help is a work in progress and we also found the program to be buggy. It's surprising Adobe signed off the program in this state - currently, Acrobat 8 Professional simply doesn't meet our expectations.

Author: Tom Arah