Thanks
Sanjeev

Before purchasing an pricely Adobe Acrobat Proffessional, consider the cheaper alternatives ( personally I use:

http://www.amicutilities.com/pdf-writer/ - PDF Writer Pro ,

as it simply install itself as a printer driver, and I can print to it documents from different applications, forms, word documents, excel, scaned images, all will be converted to .pdfs )

It can also merge documents ( if the window is left open between prints ) I also tried some free ones but all had nasty limitations.

Ramona

Acrobat is my bullet-proof transmission envelope. I especially am thankful for it when documents have to be passed around, commented on and signed. I really like the Notes feature.

Would you believe we can send our book covers to the printers in InDesign packages, EPS and AI but they won’t except PDF, because of inconsistencies? Although they are happy to accept the inside pages as PDF.

As much as I do appreciate it’s finer points, I’ve always had two issues with it.

1) It’s size. Even in the early years it was always 3-4MB. Far too big and slow for a thing that essentially reads text.

2) It’s habit of sneaking TSRs into your bootup without asking, to try to cover it’s launch slowness. Real Player and QT are the same. I don’t need to run a 24hr a day tray app for a program I may not even launch on a given day.

but why would they not merge their products? is that not the purpose of the merger itself?

No not really. The merger is about money not your and my favorite software.

In fact most of the time mergers don’t change anything other than the flow of money. Meaning, MM could very possibly continue on as MM with the same products etc… Only the profits are dumped into a new bank account with Adobe’s name on it. :)

Even before the merger, I would have doubted Microsoft would have been allowed to aquire Adobe, and best case scenario, it would have taken MS a decade to build a serious competing product to Photoshop.

Adobe has taken more than a decade to get to a stage where you might argue it genuinely challenges Quark for the layout crown it has owned since the mid 80’s. Quark have had no support and little else in way of offerings, but held their market for a very long time. Adobe are better prepared to defend PS than Quark ever were.

I pretty much agree with your ‘dream team’ of apps. I’m not quite so enamoured with Acrobat - I have a love/hate thing there — but I was glad to see Fireworks in your list, which I do have a soft spot for.

If MS wants a piece of the pie, they really are going to have to innovate (or aquire) something new, you can’t just toss money at something and overcome a solid duo like Adobe/MM.

I wouldn’t buy MS stock is regards to web development … and trust me, i’m not a biased MS hater.