Databases Toolkit

Adobe Creative Suite 3.3 debuts with Acrobat 9

David Meyer ZDNet.co.uk

Published: 25 Jun 2008 17:09 BST

Adobe has released a new version of Acrobat, its software for creating PDF documents, but UK customers can expect to pay more than twice as much as their US counterparts.

Acrobat 9 comes bundled with Creative Suite 3.3 (CS3.3) — also announced on Wednesday — or as a standalone purchase. According to Adobe, Acrobat 9 now includes native support for the company's Flash technology, so web pages with multimedia content can be converted into PDF documents. Those wishing to view multimedia embedded in such documents will be able to do with version 9 of Adobe's free Reader application, expected to appear at the start of July.

The Acrobat suite also enables users to "co-navigate" a PDF document in real-time using Adobe's hosted services, and allows several media types to be combined into one 'PDF portfolio' — Adobe gives the example of charts, spreadsheets, images and video being combined into one PDF file.

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Prices for UK customers are more than double those for US customers. Acrobat Pro Extended costs £727 in the UK, compared to $699 (£355) in the US. Acrobat Pro costs £499 in the UK and $449 (£228) in the US, while Acrobat Standard costs £311 in the UK and $299 (£152) in the US. All are available for purchase now.

As for Adobe CS3.3, the Design Premium flavour now bundles Fireworks CS3 and — for UK customers at least — is now available at a 10 percent discount compared with its version 3 predecessor. That puts CS3.3 Design Premium at a cost of £1,467 in the UK, compared with its $1,799 (£915) price tag in the US.

Last July, when Adobe released CS3, it suggested that the discrepancies between UK and US prices were the result of call centres being more expensive to run in Europe, along with the cost of putting on the Adobe Live customer event.