Adobe acrobat warning
Discussion
For some time I have used Adobe Acrobat Professional to assemble documents from various sources into neat packages. I started with Acrobat 7.0 which wasn't cheap (about £560 for a single licence.) It worked fine with XP but when I upgraded my laptop it came with Vista preloaded and Acrobat promptly stopped working. Eventually I got it going but the two were never that compatible and so I upgraded to Acrobat 8.0 via a download (say £150 but can't quite recall)
Recently I was putting together an important suite of documents and mid way through was asked by Adobe Updater did I want to update to 8.1.4. Having run the update it refused to work or recognise any Office product and I was unable to complete my project without major inconvenience.
The problem I faced was that I couldn't reinstall Acrobat 8 because it had been a download. I still had the original disk for 7.0 but that doesn't work with Office 2007. In the end I had to buy Acrobat 9 (disk) for £155 and install it on top of 7.0.
Now all seems well again.
But it seems to me to be pretty shoddy business practice to put out product that basically doesn't work and for which the only solution for the average non tech guy like me is to buy yet more software.
Recently I was putting together an important suite of documents and mid way through was asked by Adobe Updater did I want to update to 8.1.4. Having run the update it refused to work or recognise any Office product and I was unable to complete my project without major inconvenience.
The problem I faced was that I couldn't reinstall Acrobat 8 because it had been a download. I still had the original disk for 7.0 but that doesn't work with Office 2007. In the end I had to buy Acrobat 9 (disk) for £155 and install it on top of 7.0.
Now all seems well again.
But it seems to me to be pretty shoddy business practice to put out product that basically doesn't work and for which the only solution for the average non tech guy like me is to buy yet more software.
lowndes said:
For some time I have used Adobe Acrobat Professional to assemble documents from various sources into neat packages. I started with Acrobat 7.0 which wasn't cheap (about £560 for a single licence.) It worked fine with XP but when I upgraded my laptop it came with Vista preloaded and Acrobat promptly stopped working. Eventually I got it going but the two were never that compatible and so I upgraded to Acrobat 8.0 via a download (say £150 but can't quite recall)
Recently I was putting together an important suite of documents and mid way through was asked by Adobe Updater did I want to update to 8.1.4. Having run the update it refused to work or recognise any Office product and I was unable to complete my project without major inconvenience.
The problem I faced was that I couldn't reinstall Acrobat 8 because it had been a download. I still had the original disk for 7.0 but that doesn't work with Office 2007. In the end I had to buy Acrobat 9 (disk) for £155 and install it on top of 7.0.
Now all seems well again.
But it seems to me to be pretty shoddy business practice to put out product that basically doesn't work and for which the only solution for the average non tech guy like me is to buy yet more software.
Interesting - what was Adobe support's response? I've found them quite good in the past - there are so many licence scenarios to deal with...Recently I was putting together an important suite of documents and mid way through was asked by Adobe Updater did I want to update to 8.1.4. Having run the update it refused to work or recognise any Office product and I was unable to complete my project without major inconvenience.
The problem I faced was that I couldn't reinstall Acrobat 8 because it had been a download. I still had the original disk for 7.0 but that doesn't work with Office 2007. In the end I had to buy Acrobat 9 (disk) for £155 and install it on top of 7.0.
Now all seems well again.
But it seems to me to be pretty shoddy business practice to put out product that basically doesn't work and for which the only solution for the average non tech guy like me is to buy yet more software.
I tried to contact Adobe support, who had been helpful in the past over the lack of compatibility between Acrobat and Vista (it had been more than a simple UAC issue.) However this time their helpline just left me on hold listening to music in the US and I never managed to speak to anyone.
The point about keeping a copy of the downloaded 8.0 is a fair one but finding it in among all of my back up files wouldn't have been too easy and I'm not sure that I would have had the technical competence to reinstall it even if I'd found it.
Anyway for me the lesson is that if its important buy the disk and be wary of updates (although how you'd ever find out what is in them I have no idea).
The point about keeping a copy of the downloaded 8.0 is a fair one but finding it in among all of my back up files wouldn't have been too easy and I'm not sure that I would have had the technical competence to reinstall it even if I'd found it.
Anyway for me the lesson is that if its important buy the disk and be wary of updates (although how you'd ever find out what is in them I have no idea).
Next time you before you install an update make sure you make a restore point. Then if it all goes to s
t, you can just restore back to before the update.
I'm not sure but the 8.1.4 update process may even have made a restore point itself.
Another option would have been to go on the Adobe forums (or even here), it may have saved you paying out hundreds of pounds each time.
t, you can just restore back to before the update.I'm not sure but the 8.1.4 update process may even have made a restore point itself.
Another option would have been to go on the Adobe forums (or even here), it may have saved you paying out hundreds of pounds each time.
The_Jackal said:
Next time you before you install an update make sure you make a restore point. Then if it all goes to st, you can just restore back to before the update.
I'm not sure but the 8.1.4 update process may even have made a restore point itself.
Another option would have been to go on the Adobe forums (or even here), it may have saved you paying out hundreds of pounds each time.
Is there a simple way of creating a restore point using Vista? Vista has a tendency to hide program related matters. A case in point being Local Settings\Application Data folders which used to be needed in XP to back up Outlook but which need a degree in forensic computer science to find in Vista.t, you can just restore back to before the update.I'm not sure but the 8.1.4 update process may even have made a restore point itself.
Another option would have been to go on the Adobe forums (or even here), it may have saved you paying out hundreds of pounds each time.
Also can the restore point just be applied to one application eg Acrobat or is it across the whole of the suite of applications?
Of course my main point is that Adobe shouldn't put out stuff that causes problems. You only have to put Adobe 8.1.4 into Google to see (too late for me) that I was not alone in finishing up in the brown stuff after innocently updating.
Vista's structure changed for things like Local Settings etc.
You can now find everything that used to be around those folders in /User/AppData/ and there are three folders in there, Roaming, Local and LocalLow.
Creating a system restore point, you should just be able to go to 'All Programs' > Accessories > System Tools > System restore. And it should then tell you what to do or it'll be obvious.
You can now find everything that used to be around those folders in /User/AppData/ and there are three folders in there, Roaming, Local and LocalLow.
Creating a system restore point, you should just be able to go to 'All Programs' > Accessories > System Tools > System restore. And it should then tell you what to do or it'll be obvious.
HRG. said:
Can you just 'print' using CutePDF? It's free 
Maybe. Actually Office 2007, which I use, has pdf capability anyway but I need a wider spectrum of capabilities including annotating documents, adding sticky notes etc.Maybe CutePDF can do this stuff too but I'm generally wary of downloading "free" software.
Cerberus90 said:
Creating a system restore point, you should just be able to go to 'All Programs' > Accessories > System Tools > System restore. And it should then tell you what to do or it'll be obvious.
Control Panel>Back up and Restore gets to the same point but as a default only takes you to the last update added. Often that's not the one that caused the problem. But surely these days we shouldn't still be having to put out computer fires before we can to do a day's work.
What happened to the software publishers' Duty of Care and the Fitness for Purpose of their products?
lowndes said:
HRG. said:
Can you just 'print' using CutePDF? It's free
Maybe. Actually Office 2007, which I use, has pdf capability anyway but I need a wider spectrum of capabilities including annotating documents, adding sticky notes etc.Maybe CutePDF can do this stuff too but I'm generally wary of downloading "free" software.
A rant rather than a warning - Adobe software costs twice as much to buy in the UK than it does in the US. Complete ripoff for software which just keeps bloating. Download the free 3Mb FoxIT PDF reader to read a PDF without giving your PC a hernia. Download the free PDFCreator which has lots of features to create free PDF's and save yourself £££ if you can find a workaround/another format for documents that need annotations.
lowndes said:
HRG. said:
Can you just 'print' using CutePDF? It's free
Maybe. Actually Office 2007, which I use, has pdf capability anyway but I need a wider spectrum of capabilities including annotating documents, adding sticky notes etc.Maybe CutePDF can do this stuff too but I'm generally wary of downloading "free" software.
Not having a go at you, everybody is the same. In our minds we all know if we go to Adobe, then we get what we want. Job dun.
Adobe know this better than anyone, and they have a call centre to avoid getting their techies bogged down with trivial matters like customers.
Small software dev, who's not prepared to give his hard work away for nothing, can't get noticed for love nor money. Speak to the experts, speak to the people who wrote the software, buy small company software!
Substitute Microsoft, Apple, Sun, Oracle.... whatever, for Adobe as you see fit.
TurricanII said:
A rant rather than a warning - Adobe software costs twice as much to buy in the UK than it does in the US. Complete ripoff for software which just keeps bloating. Download the free 3Mb FoxIT PDF reader to read a PDF without giving your PC a hernia. Download the free PDFCreator which has lots of features to create free PDF's and save yourself £££ if you can find a workaround/another format for documents that need annotations.
Yes. No worries. Call it a rant if you like. The point remains that having downloaded an upgrade the application stopped working without warning. I profess no knowledge of the inner workings of this stuff. For me it is simply a means to an end, a tool to help me do my job. If I take my car in for a service I expect to be able to drive it away afterwards. Why should software be any different?
The point about being able to comment directly into the document is that is quick and convenient and easily understood by the recipient whereas a workaround is likely to be none of those things.
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