Adobe Systems has 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.

“Design and construction processes are notorious for being inefficient and paper-intensive,” said John Moebes, director of Construction, Crate & Barrel. “With building costs growing at about 10 percent annually, we need tools like Acrobat 8 and PDF that act as force multipliers, enabling one person to do a job that previously might require several people. For instance, with advances in Acrobat 8, many design and construction documents can now be combined into a single, more secure PDF package and delivered in seconds nationwide to project teams that can review, comment on and digitally sign materials simply using Adobe Reader.”

Other innovative organizations are realizing equally impressive benefits, leveraging the versatility of Acrobat and PDF to implement solutions tailored to their specific business needs. Successful law firms like Dallas-based Cowles & Thompson and The Veen Firm of San Francisco rely daily on Acrobat to streamline capturing, reviewing and assembling case documents, while students at the world-renowned Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania now collaborate more easily with each other and faculty using PDF documents. For creative services providers, including industry leader Capps, Acrobat is especially vital, accelerating design review cycles and helping ensure more reliable printing.

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.