Adobe's Not The Only Game In Town

Despite taking its share of knocks in the marketplace, the PDF remains ubiquitous for a reason: It's easy to create, deploy and share. Competitors to Adobe Systems Inc.'s PDF have had a tough time trying to budge it from its dominant market position.

The Test Center found Nuance Communications Inc.'s latest version of PDF Converter Professional 5 to be a worthy contender. It also gives VARs an opportunity to add a layer of functionality to a typical Office deployment.

The Ingredients: • Product: PDF Converter Professional 5 • Price: $99.99 • Distributors/Integrators: Ingram Micro, Tech Data • Company: Nuance Communications Inc. Burligton, Mass. (781) 565-5000 http://www.nuance.com

Designed specifically for business users, PDF Converter Professional 5 delivers everything needed to create, convert and edit PDF files. It can convert/create PDF files to/from Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint and XPS or Corel WordPerfect. It even supports Microsoft Office 2007 files on systems with .Net 3.0 or higher installed.

Installation had no hiccups. First, the setup installs the Visual C++ distributable (if it's not there already) and then the application. Since we were testing on an XP SP2 machine, we also downloaded and installed the .Net 3.0 Framework (~30 Mbytes) from Microsoft's Web site to test Office 2007 compatibility.

After installation, there are three new programs: PDF Converter Assistant, PDF Converter Professional and PDF Create!. The actual Converter Professional application is a complete PDF solution. Although testers had to refer to the integrated help file for guidance on some settings, the basics are all very intuitive.

Conversions were extremely fast and, for the most part, spot-on. Every once in a while, an image shifted during conversion and was superimposed over the text following it.

At a single seat list price of $99 (other license options are available), PDF Converter Professional 5 is a solid, robust alternative to Adobe Acrobat and other PDF solutions.