It’s that time of the bi-annual product cycle where Adobe brings out new versions of many of its products. So why should you move from Acrobat 8 to 9?

To start with, 9 starts up much faster than version 8.

This is a key characteristic of Adobe Acrobat Pro 9, everything is just that bit faster. There are also a bunch of new features like PDF portfolio creation, better colour conversions, Flash support, an excellent document comparison feature and the ability to work with layers.

Like many other software companies, Acrobat 9 sees Adobe moving towards a more online, hosted-services model. This means that the highlights of Acrobat 9 Pro are all about improving the way we work together on documents. Once you’ve registered on Adobe.com you have access to a host of features through your own permanent URL, where you can use ConnectNow (Adobe’s web conferencing system) as well as a phone number and teleconferencing code. These new functionalities mean you can: share screens, review proofs, show PowerPoint presentations and collaborate on a PDF document, simply by inviting someone to log in.

On the downside it’s a big (almost 1 GB) application, and many new features will only be practical when Acrobat Readers are upgraded, as it is out of cycle with the Creative Suite upgrade.