Acrobat

Do you hate having to go to umpteen sites just to download your essential software to get your computer running? Do you hate then having to again go to umpteen sites again to check for software updates, and then downloading and installing them? Well I have the answer for you, it is call the Google Pack. Not only does the Google Pack include a wealth of Google software it also includes many non-Google software titles such as, Skype, RealPlayer, Adobe Reader, Norton AntiVirus 2005 SE, Ad-Aware SE Personal, Mozilla Firefox, and all the software is downloaded and installed according to your preferences. And as an added bonus there is a service that runs in the background called Google Updater and it will keep all of the supported installed programs updated to their latest and greatest version. See image to the right for a screen shot of Google Updater. ...

Well I finally figured out how to remove the Updater5 folder from your My Documents folder. I have written about this problem, as well as many other people, and now here is the solution for us anal retentive people that don’t like our My Documents folder cluttered with application artifacts. Follow the couple steps I have outlined below and the Updater5 folder will be out of your life forever. Go to C:\Program Files\Common Files\Adobe\Updater5 Run AdobeUpdaterInstallMgr.exe and wait for the progress bar to finish and show you the following screen. Then click Browse button and change it to any directory you want as shown below. Now click the OK button and you are done. And now you should never see the Updater5 folder in your My Documents folder ever again. This solution has worked both on my Windows XP as well as Windows Vista boxes that I have tried it on. For Mac users you can try hunting down the same updater program and going through the steps however I don’t have a step-by-step guide for you. ...

Recently I posted about the bad user experience that the Adobe Update Manager provided. On the same day that I posted that entry I also sent a note to Adobe about my disappointment in their product. I am happy to say I received a positive response from Adobe, and with the e-mail below, my respect for their QA team has gone up a couple notches. I say this because it takes a level of humility that is required in software development to admit you are wrong, something that not many companies have anymore. ...

Recently I upgraded Adobe Acrobat Reader 8.0. I would first like to say that I found the new updated user interface a very nice experience. However there was one problem with the experience and it had nothing to do with the Adobe Acrobat Reader 8.0, it had to do with the Adobe Update Manager. For some reason the Update Manager puts a folder called Updater5 in the My Documents folder. From what I can tell this folder is always empty at least it has been always empty on my laptop. You are all probably saying why not just delete the folder and stop whining about it. However it is not that easy, I delete the Updater5 folder and as soon as I open Adobe Acrobat Reader up, the folder reappears. This makes me furious because not only is this a bad experience for users, such as my self, that like to keep their document folders organized, but the folder isn’t called Adobe’s Documents or Adobe’s Temporary Directory it is called My Documents as in Nick’s Personal Documents. ...