FM 8 and Acrobat Pro 8

[Helen Borrie]

Hi List,

Can FM 8 and Acrobat Pro 8 coexist on the same machine?  If so, which should be installed first to ensure that one gets the full functionality of Distiller from both applications?

Before I started with the "8" versions I had the respective "6" versions working happily side by side.  So far, with both "6" versions out of the picture I've encountered two weeks of horrible problems, including that the uninstaller script for Acro 8 gets broken by the updates (specifically, the Acro updates, as far as I can tell, with the bone pointing at 8.1.5).  This requires hours of pick-and-shovel effort in the Registry and the filesystem to clean out everything Adobe and start afresh.

Currently I have achieved "partial" functionality by installing FM 8 first (which is the only option to get Distiller installed) and then installing only Reader 8 afterwards.  I can get the updates to both without (touch wood!) breaking stuff.  However, I'm at a loss without the full Acro Pro capabilities, at least until our legacy doc sources are converted to DITA, because I still depend on the Sonar Bookends plug-in for post-processing hot-links into the indexes of PDFs created with other tools.

Any compatibility advice out there, gained from actual experience? 

Or should I just sigh and accept that I'll need to keep a legacy FM6 + Acro Pro 6 setup on another box?

Thanks, and apologies in advance for this being a bit OT.  

Helen