This is not really “news” – Adobe announced this in June last year – but in case you’ve missed this so far, here is a reminder: Adobe is ending support for Acrobat 9 and Reader 9 on June 26th, 2013. This is just a few weeks away…
What exactly does this mean?
- no more technical support
- no more product updates
- no more security updates
- no more updates to support new or modified operating systems
You may think that you can live without technical support (“Hey, it’s been years since I had to call Adobe support, I have a buddy who knows this stuff…”) or product updates (“Acrobat 9 has every feature I want and need…”), but you really should consider upgrading because of the last two bullet points: Security updates are important to not compromise your system and your documents. The bad guys know that there won’t be any more updates for Acrobat and Reader 9, so if somebody finds a security leak, they can exploit this without any risk of anybody shutting down this leak. And, because Adobe has no control over what Microsoft and Apple have up their sleeves, they cannot prepare for any OS updates that can potentially harm a perfectly fine Acrobat installation.
You may not think that you need to upgrade, but you should take a long and thorough look at what you risk by running a system that is no longer supported. If you have a licensed copy of Acrobat 9, you are eligible for the upgrade discount when you upgrade to Acrobat XI. That does not make it cheap, but certainly cheaper than having to deal with just one major problem you could have avoided by running the latest version of Acrobat.
If you are running Reader 9, there really is no reason to not upgrade: It’s a free download, so all you have to invest is some time and bandwidth. And, you are getting a bunch of new features that are well worth that time. For example, Reader XI lets you save a modified PDF file, so now you can fill in a form and save it locally, without that form being Reader enabled. You can also add text to a document, even if the document author did not enable the Typewriter tool.
So, be safe and upgrade.
We still use Acrobat 8 for merge spot colours and convert spot to cmyk. Newer versions dont do this well at all. I have been in touch with Adobe and replicated the problem in front of them and they never got back in touch. I guess not alot of people dont use it the way we do at work. Another rant would be the action wizard on the newest version with cc. You cant open it without a pdf being open. Why do they get rid of useful tools…
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When will Adobe Acrobat 9.x be offered for free?
Jim, based on Adobe’s history with old products, it’s a safe bet to say “never”.