mjncad
Super Member
I´ve been using Adobe Acrobat authoring software for a few years now to convert paper records into electronic ones and do other editing chores their reader can't do since it's free. I´ve been using version 8, and I figured it was time to upgrade to version X (10) as I like to keep within one to two versions of being current with any software I use on a regular basis.
First of all, if you are considering upgrading your Adobe Acrobat reader or authoring software to version X, think twice based on my experience.
1. With X I was unable to retrieve financial statements and other documents from at least one financial institution. Their tech support told me there are known issues with Acrobat X and Internet Explorer 8. They gave me some workarounds to try; but they did not solve the problem.
2. I encountered a similar problem when trying to print out Priority Mail postage from the USPS website. The USPS tech people have not responded.
3. If you work with multiple documents at the same time like I do, X opens each one in a new instance (window) thereby cluttering up your Windows taskbar tray. For the life of me I could not find a way to turn that annoying "feature" off like I easily can in version 8.
4. Adobe like other companies changed the toolbar icons again. Software such as this is a tool, not a shiny new car that needs freshening up to keep people coming in to buy the latest model.
5. I like the old fashioned toolbar at the top of the document window for navigation, etc and dislike the new self-hiding toolbar for basic navigation at the bottom of the page that appears if you put your mouse in the zone. I could not find a setting to make the old-school toolbar stay active from document to document, and web site to web site that opens PDF files in your browser window. To get the old-school toolbar to appear, one has to click the Acrobat symbol (Dunce cap) at the right of the self-hiding toolbar. That gets annoying real quick when one has to do that almost every time a document is opened.
6. Depending on the document I like to have the display set to 2-up that is essentially like looking at a book. Even if I set this display behavior to be the default setting for a document, scanning in additional pages kept setting it back to single page display.
7. Default scanning mode includes OCR (Optical Character Recognition), which is fine in theory; but makes the document bigger and slows the scanning process down. One has to pick Custom Scan to get around this "Feature" as I couldn't find a setting to turn OCR on/off by default.
8. Adobe has yet to fix an annoying little problem that has been ongoing for years in that if you insert a file, then click file insert again to delete, copy, rename the inserted file from disk as part of good file management, the file insert window sometimes refreshes itself, sometimes it doesn't leaving a user unaware of the bug that the file has indeed been deleted, renamed, or copied.
I'm sure there are more bugs to be found; but the first three I listed are show stoppers for me and I removed X today and put Version 8 back on. Sheila tells me they use Version 9 of the reader where she works and she hasn't mentioned any problems to me; however I'm going to stick with 8 until Version 11 comes out and hopefully Adobe will have fixed this defective pile of garbage software by then.
The PDF file format is fine; X's implementation of how to read, create, and edit PDF files is seriously screwed up.
The national retailer where I got my upgrade won't refund my money since I opened the box and installed it, which is in accordance with their policies. If the media were defective, they would replace it; but the DVD-ROM is fine and crap software falls into a gray area as to what defines defective. Wish me luck as I try to get Adobe to refund my money. Thank you software pirates for making honest people pay for their thieving habits.
Thanks for your time.
First of all, if you are considering upgrading your Adobe Acrobat reader or authoring software to version X, think twice based on my experience.
1. With X I was unable to retrieve financial statements and other documents from at least one financial institution. Their tech support told me there are known issues with Acrobat X and Internet Explorer 8. They gave me some workarounds to try; but they did not solve the problem.
2. I encountered a similar problem when trying to print out Priority Mail postage from the USPS website. The USPS tech people have not responded.
3. If you work with multiple documents at the same time like I do, X opens each one in a new instance (window) thereby cluttering up your Windows taskbar tray. For the life of me I could not find a way to turn that annoying "feature" off like I easily can in version 8.
4. Adobe like other companies changed the toolbar icons again. Software such as this is a tool, not a shiny new car that needs freshening up to keep people coming in to buy the latest model.
5. I like the old fashioned toolbar at the top of the document window for navigation, etc and dislike the new self-hiding toolbar for basic navigation at the bottom of the page that appears if you put your mouse in the zone. I could not find a setting to make the old-school toolbar stay active from document to document, and web site to web site that opens PDF files in your browser window. To get the old-school toolbar to appear, one has to click the Acrobat symbol (Dunce cap) at the right of the self-hiding toolbar. That gets annoying real quick when one has to do that almost every time a document is opened.
6. Depending on the document I like to have the display set to 2-up that is essentially like looking at a book. Even if I set this display behavior to be the default setting for a document, scanning in additional pages kept setting it back to single page display.
7. Default scanning mode includes OCR (Optical Character Recognition), which is fine in theory; but makes the document bigger and slows the scanning process down. One has to pick Custom Scan to get around this "Feature" as I couldn't find a setting to turn OCR on/off by default.
8. Adobe has yet to fix an annoying little problem that has been ongoing for years in that if you insert a file, then click file insert again to delete, copy, rename the inserted file from disk as part of good file management, the file insert window sometimes refreshes itself, sometimes it doesn't leaving a user unaware of the bug that the file has indeed been deleted, renamed, or copied.
I'm sure there are more bugs to be found; but the first three I listed are show stoppers for me and I removed X today and put Version 8 back on. Sheila tells me they use Version 9 of the reader where she works and she hasn't mentioned any problems to me; however I'm going to stick with 8 until Version 11 comes out and hopefully Adobe will have fixed this defective pile of garbage software by then.
The PDF file format is fine; X's implementation of how to read, create, and edit PDF files is seriously screwed up.
The national retailer where I got my upgrade won't refund my money since I opened the box and installed it, which is in accordance with their policies. If the media were defective, they would replace it; but the DVD-ROM is fine and crap software falls into a gray area as to what defines defective. Wish me luck as I try to get Adobe to refund my money. Thank you software pirates for making honest people pay for their thieving habits.
Thanks for your time.
