Re: Follow-up to 'seeking a solution' for Acrobat

[Bill Hartzer <XBJH%mimi -at- MAGIC -dot- ITG -dot- TI -dot- COM>]

Hi David,

You said:

"I was wondering if you are referring to features that come standard
with
Adobe Acrobat, or if these are features for which you have to pay extra
for by purchasing a per site license. I ask because these features are
not available on the Acrobat viewer we're using..."

Of course, not, David!  Adobe Acrobat Reader is free, and any company
distributing products for free would eventually go out of business if
they didn't have some 'gimmick' or other way of ultimately making you
pay  $$$$ for their product.  (Adobe Acrobat Reader is available FOR
FREE on Adobe's WWW site at http://www.adobe.com.)

Here's how Adobe Acrobat works:

You, as someone who wants to distribute electronic documentation and
distribute it to your users, must pay to create Adobe Acrobat files.

 - After you have paid money for the program that allows you to create
these files (Acrobat Exchange or Acrobat Pro), you can distribute the
files you create for free as well as a copy of the program used to view
these files.  There is no limit or site license required to distribute
the Adobe Acrobat Reader program.  It's free.  In fact, they want you to
give it to as many people as possible.

 - If you wish to create a way for your users to search many .PDF files
by using keywords you may also PURCHASE Adobe Acrobat Catalog which
makes an index of all the terms in all of the .PDF files.  There's still
a catch.

If you wish to allow your users to actually use this search capability
within a .PDF file (the only way to do a search), you must purchase the
SEARCH plug-in (add-on) which also costs money.  If you want, you can
purchase  Adobe Acrobat Search for CD-ROMs, which gives you license to
distribute the Adobe Acrobat Reader and Search plug-in for one title of
a CD-ROM. Search for CD-ROMs costs $500.

You see, David, there must be some way for Adobe's users to pay for the
products they use.  Of course, this ends up being a marketing ploy by
Adobe.  Whether or not it is a fair way of doing business and whether or
not Adobe makes any money doing it this way remains to be seen and I'll
leave that up to your judgment.  I'm just here to pass on the facts.

One reason I have to chosen to use Adobe Acrobat is because of the
Search engine.  However, another reason I went with Adobe Acrobat is
because of the fact that it's the only Electronic Book program (the only
one I'm aware of) that allows you to distribute the Reader program for
free, to as many users as you like.  One extreme example is that Apple
Computer charges a license fee of $50 per license for you to distribute
their Apple Viewer (this might not be the name of it), Apple's own
electronic book software product.

All of this 'marketing stuff' by Adobe is kind of a hassle to deal with,
especially because I think this is the first company to do something
like this.  However, all in all (in my opinion), Adobe Acrobat is a
reasonably priced product that has a great boolean search engine.  (FYI:
the search engine wasn't originally created by Adobe...I think it was
originally created by some company in Colorodo.)

Regards,
Bill Hartzer                         Bill Hartzer
Contract Technical Writer            President
Texas Instruments, Inc.              Highfield Marketing Group, Inc.
Dallas, TX USA                       Irving, TX USA
xbjh -at- msg -dot- ti -dot- com                      Highfield -at- aol -dot- com
(214) 575 - 2041                     (214) 432 - 0124
(214) 798 - 2976 voice pager         (214) 432 - 0152 fax
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