Acrobat 9 - a disaster

[rinch at Inficon.com]

Adobe has never understood how corporate IT departments work, and I've 
come to realize that Adobe doesn't understand how corporations handle 
multiple installations of Adobe products across a business network. Adobe 
is focused solely on one installation on one computer handled by one 
person who has all the rights to do everything. This is a complaint I've 
had about FM for years and years, and the same goes for Acrobat. My IT 
department gets so frustrated with Adobe technical support that Adobe is 
only called if the problem seems unsolvable, and generally the advice we 
get from Adobe is worthless. My IT department doesn't check for prior 
installations nor do they remove old programs. IT simply installs new 
programs based on whatever version of software they happen to have. If 
Adobe does not want different versions of Acrobat on the same computer, 
Adobe's installer should delete the old versions. If it's not kosher to 
have, say, Reader and Acrobat Pro Extended on the same computer, Adobe's 
installer should take care of the problem. We have computers with 
different versions of Acrobat and Reader installed. It's not at all 
unusual. We've got 100s of installations here. If problems occur that 
cannot be solved, one either learns to live with the problems or IT will 
wipe the hard drive and install their current "footprint". That's a very 
heavy handed approach, but it's all about time and money. IT will only put 
so much time towards "fixing" computer software, then they simply "wipe 
it" and start again. Sorry, I can't do much. It's not my computer, it is 
the corporation's computer on the corporation's network. I'm just allowed 
to use the computer and network to do my job.

Don't get me wrong, I love Adobe products and I use TCS2 and Illustrator 
daily. PDFs have simply become the norm for our business communications. 
But, I do wish Adobe would get some clue as to how business networks and 
IT departments work, and get away from Adobe's "single computer - single 
administrator" mindset.

Richard