Adobe Acrobat Exchange v2.1

 Adobe Acrobat Exchange v2.1, from my very limited experience with it, appears to be both a utility and an application. Adobe's advertisement claims; "Adobe Acrobat Exchange is the fastest, lowest cost way to publish electronic documents via CD-ROMS, networks, or even the World Wide Web!" It accepts any document from any Windows (or Macintosh) application and converts it to Adobe Portable Document Format (PDF) as easily as you'd print it.

 With Adobe Acrobat Exchange, your transmitted document is guaranteed to look exactly like the original-with all the color, graphics, and text formatting preserved. You can send your PDF file to anyone, and they can view it or print it on any PC and printer with the free Acrobat Reader. Full-text search across multiple documents lets you instantly retrieve exactly what you need, and built-in navigation features make any PDF document easier to browse.

Included in Exchange is:

• Acrobat PDF Writer- a driver that enables you to "print" common business documents, such as word processing or spreadsheet files, to a PDF file (instead of to a printer).
• Acrobat Search- provides full-text search capabilities for PDF files that have been indexed using the Acrobat Catalog software.
• Acrobat Reader- enables Windows (and Windows NT), Macintosh, DOS, and UNIX users to view, navigate through, and print any PDF document. Reader 2.1 can be freely distributed to Macintosh and Windows users. Reader 1.0 is available to DOS and UNIX users through a special licensing agreement.
• Acrobat Catalog- Acrobat Catalog now runs on the Macintosh.
• Movies- Add to your PDF file QuickTime and AVI movies and sounds,
• which can be played back using the movie tool plug-in.
• Weblink- Link PDF documents to the World Wide Web. Add links from PDF documents to documents on Web servers anywhere on the Internet using the Weblink plug-in. Windows NT 3.5 support- Exchange is compatible with Windows NT 3.5.
• Security- you can add password protection to your PDF document and limit access to document features such as printing, selecting text and graphics, and adding or changing notes.

 The minimum system requirements are a 386 processor, Microsoft Windows 3.1, 4mb memory, and a 1.44mb floppy drive. The packaging doesn't mention space requirements, and neither does the manual. I did a full install, including the tutorial(recommended), and this used almost 6.9mb on the hard drive.

ATM (included) used almost 2mb more. Adobe Type Manager is a font manager installed into the main group in program manager. On bootup into Windows, it sets the fonts you select as default, and makes it easy to change fonts. The system used for this test was a 386-25dx with 8mb memory. Installation took about 8 minutes, and was completely seamless. Absolutely no problems; the process is very easy. You simply follow on screen instructions.

 One item I did not care for, was the placement of the Acrobat icons inside the main section, not giving me the option for another location. If you're like me, your groups are cluttered enough, and the choice of an empty group would be nice.

 Acrobat Exchange wasn't intuitive in usage for me personally, but is very easy to learn. The tutorial I recommended installing is simple and straightforward. If you have any experience with word processing, or presentation programs, you will have no problems.

 A nice feature I think really useful, is the slide presentation. You can link graphics and text to create slide show presentations to accompany lectures, or as kiosk displays. A sort of 'sticky' note can be placed anywhere in a file. This note can contain any message you want, to be read by anyone. It is called up with a double click, and after closing, can be deleted with no effect on the document.

Acrobat Exchange doesn't merely convert documents to PDF format, it also creates them using PDF Writer. I easily converted this review from WordPerfect to PDF. You start the application that contains the document you want to convert, and open the document. Click on File, Print. Change the current printer driver to Acrobat PDF Writer on DISK. Name the file and select the destination for the file. Click OK. A dialog box pops up and allows you to enter the subject, author, and keywords. Acrobat Search can enter these data fields, which are saved with the document, as search criteria. Again click OK. The document has been saved to your chosen location as a PDF document!

 A rather sparse manual is included, but it is adequate. Extensive help is available online, but it only takes a short time hands on to make use of this product.
 
 

When I sat down to do this review, I was going to suggest that Exchange would appeal to those doing desktop publishing. After thinking about it, I feel that anyone who deals in the exchange of electronic info, including on the Internet, will find this program a useful tool. I know I will make extensive use of it!

I recommend Exchange, particularly considering all it does for such a low street price. Suggested retail price is $195.00. I was unable to locate Adobe Acrobat Exchange in stock locally, though it can be ordered. Egghead Software prices it at $142.48 cue card, but remember the coupon in the P.C.ALAMODE? This coupon along with your membership card, reduces the price to $135.36. The lowest mailorder price I found was $129.95. Support our advertisers!

 Adobe can be reached at

A note from the Webmaster: The Adobe Acrobat Reader software, used only to read documents in the PDF format, is free. You can download it straight from Adobe. Adobe is also offering Plug-Ins, which are utilities that work with the Adobe Acrobat Exchange. These are also free. You can read the Plug-In descriptions and download the utilities from Adobe.