The latest version of Adobe Acrobat is becoming available with the release of Acrobat Professional 8.
The latest news out of Adobe Systems is the availability of Acrobat Professional, version 8:
Adobe Systems Incorporated (Nasdaq:ADBE) today announced the immediate availability of Adobe® Acrobat® 8 software amid an enthusiastic early reception from knowledge workers worldwide who for months have tested and provided feedback to help the company fine tune the product line. The new Acrobat 8 provides business professionals with innovative tools for communicating and collaborating with confidence across the boundaries of operating systems, applications and firewalls. With Acrobat 8, users can now more effectively engage with the rich, high-value information in PDF documents and forms, and more reliably and securely drive their work to completion leveraging the ubiquitous, free Adobe Reader® software.Acrobat 8 builds on Adobe’s heritage in the digital documents business, and unveils a truly comprehensive set of capabilities for working with PDF documents within a sleek, modern user experience. The product line introduces several major innovations for professionals in a wide variety of areas, such as architecture, engineering and construction (AEC), IT, legal, marketing, manufacturing, and publishing. Moving far beyond simple PDF creation, industry leaders like Caterpillar Inc., Eaton Corporation, the Internal Revenue Service, Quebecor World Inc., and others are testing Acrobat 8 to improve communication and collaboration inside and outside their organizations.
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Adobe today also announced the immediate availability of a free trial of the Adobe Acrobat® Connect™ hosted service, the first web conferencing and collaboration solution to offer “always-on†personal meeting rooms. Acrobat Connect enables knowledge workers to instantly connect online with nothing more than a web browser and the ubiquitous Adobe Flash® Player software. Together with Acrobat 8, the newly expanded Acrobat family accelerates the flow of business by allowing people to easily work together in real-time.
The Acrobat family consists of Acrobat 8 Professional, Acrobat 8 Standard, Acrobat 8 Elements, Acrobat 3D Version 8, Acrobat Connect, and Acrobat Connect Professional.
Pricing And Availability
Acrobat 8 Professional for Microsoft® Windows® and Mac OS X, and Acrobat 8 Standard for Windows, are immediately available in English, French, German, and Japanese language versions. The Mac OS X version of Acrobat 8 Professional is a Universal Binary that will install on Intel® and PowerPC® based Macintosh systems. Acrobat 8 Professional is available for an estimated street price of US$449, and registered users of qualifying earlier versions of Acrobat1 can upgrade to Acrobat 8 Professional for an estimated street price of US$159. Acrobat 8 Standard is available for an estimated street price of US$299, and registered users of qualifying earlier versions of Acrobat2 can upgrade to Acrobat 8 Standard for an estimated street price of US$99. Additionally, Adobe Reader 8 is expected to be available in early December 2006.
The Acrobat Connect hosted service is immediately available as a free trial through the end of the current calendar year. The trial can be accessed via the “Start Meeting†button in Acrobat 8 and Adobe Reader 8, and directly at www.adobe.com/products/acrobatconnect. The commercial release of Acrobat Connect, initially in English, is expected to be available in January 2007 for a subscription price of US$39 per month, or US$395 per year per personal meeting room.
Adobe Creative Suite® 2.3 Premium software, which includes Acrobat 8 Professional and also bundles Dreamweaver® 8 software, is expected to be available on Nov. 8, 2006.
Last month I covered the announcement of version 8 and found the touted new features to be a bit underwhelming for creative pros in their everyday work. I’ve since obtained a copy of the Acrobat 8 beta, and I’m fairly impressed—Adobe has been quiet about a couple features that will make print designers do a double-take. If you want to know more, keep checking Designorati.com for my upcoming review.
It’s important to note that, as of today, only Acrobat 8 Professional is available. Other Acrobat applications have not yet become available in version 8, nor has CS2 been bundled with Acrobat 8 (as well as Dreamweaver 8). As the press release suggests, November 8 is the expected availability date.

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