New Acrobat seen this year

Adobe Systems is expected to release a new version of its Acrobat software by the end of 2004, according to analysts and authors familiar with the company's plans.

Acrobat is Adobe's family of tools for creating content based on the company's portable document format, or PDF, the cornerstone of Adobe's "intelligent document" push to make PDF documents the foundation for exchanging business data.

The current version of Acrobat was released in April 2003, with Adobe adding a light-duty version for ordinary office workers and later a server version.

Adobe typically lets two years pass between Acrobat releases, but Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster said in a report published Thursday that Acrobat 7 is likely to come in ahead of schedule, either in late December or early January. Munster cited industry trends and publicity material for several Acrobat how-to books scheduled for publication early next year.

An Adobe representative declined to comment.

Web sites for leading technology-related publishers Wiley and Osborne both list upcoming books on "Acrobat X." The Wiley book promises an in-depth guide to "the powerful new release of Adobe Acrobat, expected in late 2004." The Osborne book is set for publication Jan. 18, while the Wiley titled is pegged for February.

Several financial analysts have downgraded their rating on Adobe in the past few months, based on concerns that the company will see a typical downturn in sales between major product releases. Munster has kept his "outperform" rating, however, saying an anticipated revival in magazine advertising and continuing interest in Adobe's enterprise and Creative Suite products should help keep the company on trend. "We believe these solid fundamental trends will continue," Munster wrote in Thursday's report.

Still no Linux Reader for 6.0

Adobe still has not released a Linux reader for Acrobat 6. Version 5 is an obsolete Motif program and has trouble reading some newer files. So much for cross platform support.

[ledzep75]

RE: Still no Linux Reader for 6.0

Write you own PDF reader then! Quit your Crying!

[Jonathan]

Bloatware

Great. How much slower is version 7 going to be over version 6!??!
Our company got a couple of test licenses for 6 for our graphics word / processing department. I got to play around with AB6 for a few days on my own system. How the heck can performance degrade so badly from one version to another!?!? Opening up the app itself takes aprox twice as long. Doing a search takes seconds to open up the search pane vs. instantaneous on V5.
Adobe better do some serious cleanup because 6 is a freaking mess.


But lets take John's advice from another post on this thread, and go build our own version of Acrobat writer! Come on who's with me!?! *rolls eyes*

[ijaguar]

I totally agrees.... v6 sucks

it is so frustrating to deal with v6. on download.com 71% said that v6 sucks... i added it on a few computers and had problems on all of them.....had to search around to load v5 again. and what is even more amazing is that acrobat seems to have ignored all the negative comments. im surprised it took them this long to come up with an improvement. i hope its not dumb and dumber.