Reader Extensions vs. Adobe Acrobat 8

[Former Community Member]

As you are probably aware, one of the best features of Reader Extensions is to allow people with Adobe Reader to save their form data locally.



Now, Adobe Acrobat 8 Professional has enabled the same feature.



So my question is... what's the benefit of owning Reader Extensions?

[Former Community Member]

Well,



- RE can be an automated server process, whereas Acro 8 is a manual client process

- I believe the Acro 8 license only allows 500 users

- RE can open other features such as DB access, WS access, comments, working with file attachments, etc



Chris

Adobe Enterprise Developer Support

[Former Community Member]

Thanx for the reply.



Could you elaborate on the license issue for me (or point to a doc that would explain it).



Much appreciated!



Justin

[Former Community Member]

Honestly I'm not sure where this is documented. I'd assume it's in the Acrobat 8 EULA. If this is a concern for you I'd suggest speaking about it with your account rep. before purchasing.



Chris

Adobe Enterprise Developer Support

[Former Community Member]

ummm well... you have answered your own question there????



reader extensions enable things so that you dont require the full acrobat professional...

[Former Community Member]

How can we activate Reader Extensions. It is installed on our server. But giving an error about credentials when logged in. Do we have to provide a credential file before installing ?



Another question, it will cost too much because you have to pay for each document opened with RE. Think of a workflow project that will be used inside a company having lots of office employees. The cost will be too high. Does it become cheaper to buy an adobe 8.0 professional license for every person which will not be very cheap also.



In this case, may be we shouldn't choose to work with adobe.



What is your advise ?

[Former Community Member]

Guvenc@adobeforums.com wrote:

> How can we activate Reader Extensions. It is installed on our server. But giving an error about credentials when logged in. Do we have to provide a credential file before installing ?

>

> Another question, it will cost too much because you have to pay for each document opened with RE. Think of a workflow project that will be used inside a company having lots of office employees. The cost will be too high. Does it become cheaper to buy an adobe 8.0 professional license for every person which will not be very cheap also.

>

> In this case, may be we shouldn't choose to work with adobe.

>

> What is your advise ?



There are different licensing models. There is a per-form license and a per-user license. The

per-form license makes sense where you have a small number of forms being used by a large (or

unlimited) number of users. The per-user license makes sense where you have a large number of forms

and a pre-determined number of users. In your case, you should find out about the per-user licensing.



--

Justin Klei

Cardinal Solutions Group

www.cardinalsolutions.com

[Former Community Member]

Adope Professional - allow users to save changes locally



I can see the feature in adobe professional under 'Advanced' to grant rights to Reader users to save the file locally after editing.



What I don't know is how the 'tally' of 500 users/readers gets calculated.



If you email the form to a customer who completes and saves it, and maybe sends it on to his advisor to complete some further info and then prints and signs it, how does this update the 'tally' in the form? Presumably each person who has opened it or saved it should be counted.



Does the user need to be online when completing and saving the form so that their 'use' of the form gets recorded?



Does the 500 limit apply to each form created in AP8? Or is cumulative ie apply to include anyone who has opened/saved any form from that AP8 package? Or is that up to 500 forms rights enabled forms can be created?



I wonder if anyone can point me in the right direction to understand this.

[Former Community Member]

I have struggled with this for a long time, and have given up trying to get clear answers from Adobe. Its rediculous that they produce such a good product and have such a hard time with licencing issues. I've gotten the "contact the vendor who sold you this" response and they can't answer either.

I bought reader extensions for my org (a US NAVY group) with 550 client licenses. Everything works great, but I can't put much on my website because of concerns that someone outside the golden 550 users might grab a copy of one of my extended forms. I put a restriction notice on the opening screen to give myself some protection, but there is no way to set who can read it without storing all those credentials on the form, which would make it impossibly large.

Some I wanted to be able to forward to our parent DON organization, but I cannot.

I was hoping that Adobe 8 would help with this, but if it has a 500 user limit, I only lose 50 licenses. Everything Roy said is exactly what I've been trying to figure out as well.

I'm trying to figure all this out, and want to be legal, but it appears that it cannot be done unless you are in a completely closed system.

[Former Community Member]

Have you tried the new version of
Acrobat Reader..I believe it should solve your problem..