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Acrobat X aspires to be the Swiss knife of multi-media communications – facilitating the sharing and collaboration of digital documents amongst co-workers.

Adobe Acrobat X

The newly launched Version 10 sees its continued evolution – from its original inception as a standardised document viewer – into a vehicle for sharing compilations (Adobe calls them Portfolios) of text and graphics-embellished documents, voice and video presentations, as well as Flash animations.

Together with the free Acrobat Reader X, tighter collaboration among co-workers is enhanced with features like the ability to leave and consolidate comments amongst multiple recipients of a PDF document, as well as integration with Microsoft SharePoint and Office suite 2010.

Other features include the ability to automate routine, multi-step tasks with scripted Actions that do stuff like removing private meta data prior to publication and sharing of documents. User interface has also been made more ergonomical with the ability to display the most commonly used tools into one pane. Enterprise-wide deployment of the software is also made easier for IT administrators.

The software ships 30 days from today. Between now and the shipping date, buyers of the previous version Acrobat 9 will get a free upgrade to Acrobat X when the latter ships. There are three versions of Acrobat X available:

• Acrobat X Standard – US$355
  (upgrade from Acrobat 9 Standard – US$165)
• Acrobat X Pro – US$529
  (upgrade from Acrobat 9 Pro – US$235)
• Acrobat X Suite – US$1459
  (upgrade from Acrobat 9 Pro Extended – US$969)

The detailed feature list of the three versions can be found here. The main difference between the Standard and Pro versions is in the inclusion of Adobe LiveCycle® Designer Enterprise Suite 2 in the latter. The Suite version sees the inclusion of image-editor Photoshop CS5, presentation converter Presenter 7, user-interface capture and presenter Captivate 5, and video converter Media Encoder CS5.

Adobe Acrobat X works in conjunction with the free Acrobat Reader X and online service Acrobat.com.

Reader X expands PDF access to mobile devices for Android, Windows Phone 7 and Blackberry Tablet OS. Apple iOS platforms as well as Windows Phone 7 phones – which do not support Flash – will not be able to access Portfolios since Portfolios requires Flash support.

Acrobat.com sees the introduction of Adobe SendNow, a new document exchange service that enables users to send and receive large files and track them with proof of receipt, avoid problems arising from email gateway, complicated FTP servers, and costs of expensive overnight mail. Adobe CreatePDF enables easy conversion of files to professional PDF documents from within Adobe Reader X or any Web browser.