Adobe shi ing Acrobat 8

Adobe today a ounced the immediate availability of Acrobat 8 (Universal Binary!), both Standard and Profe ional versio . Acrobat 8 Pro costs $449 USD, or $159 for qualifying upgrades, while Acrobat 8 Standard is a$299 or $99 for upgrades. You'll need Mac OS X 10.4.3 or later.

This version "introduces several major i ovatio for profe ionals in a wide variety of areas, such as architecture, engineering and co truction (AEC), IT, legal, marketing, manufacturing, and publishing" and enables users to "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."

The free Adobe Reader 8 is expected to be released in early December 2006 and Adobe Creative Suite 2.3 Premium will include Acrobat 8 Pro, as well as Dreamweaver 8 when it shi this month - although the rest of the Suite i 't UB yet.

The Acrobat family has 4 versio now - Acrobat Pro, Acrobat Standard, Acrobat Elements (Windows) and Acrobat 3D (Windows). Plus, the free Adobe Reader. Figuring out which one is really the best for your needs involves using this product comparison matrix. If you want to be able to create forms, for example, you'll need to ring for the Pro version. UPDATE: An older pre release indicates that Acrobat 8 Standard i 't even available for the Mac, but it's not really clear to me on Adobe's we ite. If true, that really sucks. Way to show your continued su ort for Mac users, Adobe! Care to defend that, John Nack? More details as we get them...

Adobe also a ounced the immediate availability of a free trial of the Acrobat Co ect, a hosted service and the first web conferencing and collaboration solution to offer "always-on" personal meeting rooms.