The last few weeks had seen a number of products released geared towards the home and enthusiast users. Now Adobe has brought out products geared towards the high end.

First up was the announcement of Adobe Acrobat 8. Of all of the Adobe products, Acrobat is the one that I find extremely useful. PDF files are a big part of my workflow so I was definitely interested to see what this new version delivered. I read through the release twice and just couldn’t see anything at all that would benefit me. So I doubt I’ll be upgrading anytime soon. From what I can tell, about the only significant feature is the “Connect” service based on the Flash technology acquired from Macromedia. It certainly isn’t something I’d use.

To go along with the new version of Acrobat, they also announced a new version of the Creative Suite. Acrobat 7 was replaced with Acrobat 8. The other big news is a little more hidden. GoLive is no longer part of the suite and Dreamweaver takes its place. Surprisingly, Adobe does plan to continue selling GoLive as a separate product. I guess it isn’t dead, it will just survive on life support for a while until the sales dry up. If you have CS 2, you can upgrade for a fairly small amount to CS 2.3. I suppose if you want the new Acrobat and don’t have Dreamweaver 8 that it might be a good deal. Otherwise, I’d save your cash.

Reports are saying that CS 3 will be released this spring with all new versions of Photoshop, InDesign and Illustrator. So if you really want to buy something from Adobe, you better save your money for the all-new suite.

Personally, I’ll stay with Corel’s suite. It costs a lot less, delivers more and is much easier to use. I just don’t understand why so many users choose Adobe. I’m not a big fan of mud huts.