New Adobe Acrobat to hit the shops

Acrobat version 8.00 can connect to a virtual meeting room for real-time Web conferencing. Live audio and video conferences will be controlled within the software, but only if you pay an extra $39 per month.

This move is part of a cunning plan by Adobe to merge its Connect 1 software with Acrobat.

The big idea is that it will make it easier to share and comment about PDF files among an online network of people.

Of course the majority of use who just use Acrobat to look at PDFs probably will not notice much difference, although the new version will enable better exporting of PDF documents to other popular document formats.

Acrobat 8 Professional for Windows and Macintosh will cost $450 while Acrobat 8 Standard, will sell for $300.