Anyone preparing to drop a few hundred dollars on Adobe Acrobat should stop in their tracks and take a good long look at Bluebeam's PDF Revu. Never heard of it? No surprise. That's because it's largely a targeted product, namely, to those in professional fields where documentation is king: Law, construction, architecture, and a small host of others. What follows is a list of credits: 1. Bluebeam is much easier to use, much more responsive, and far better to look at. Take it from an information designer and former UX designer who cannot abide unintuitive, ugly, or buggy software. 2. Bluebeam handles LOADS. Very large PDF files, PDF Packages with built-in folders, documents on large sheets, splitting, extracting, and combining PDFs, PDF creation and conversion.. Done. Done. Done. And that list goes on. 3. Bluebeam is much, much less expensive. At $179.00 for a single Revu user licence, you're putting two (and a half) people to work for about the same price it takes to put one to work on Acrobat. 4. Bluebeam is already heavily used in construction, engineering, and architecture, and has had a few years to mature as a PDF and documentation solution. 5. Their customer support is very good, capable, and courteous. 6. Their user licences are transferable: Using it at work and need it at home? Save 179.00 and simply unregister your copy on the work PC before you leave, then register your copy on your home PC with the same credentials. Bluebeam will tell you so. (Just don't forget to unregister your home copy before going back to work the next day.) 7. Yes, there's a good, longish free trial that is fully functional. Once it expires, Bluebeam will still work as a PDF reader. There's my micro-review of Bluebeam for you. No, it isn't perfect. I noticed a problem with creating PDF packages where too many folders will make them all disappear (I'm still working with support on that one), and as of this review it is still not available for Mac, though they are working on their first release this year. Nevertheless,once I started using it over a year ago, I was hooked. Acrobat is off my Get list, likely for good. -R.
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Anyone preparing to drop a few hundred dollars on Adobe Acrobat should stop in their tracks and take a good long look at Bluebeam's PDF Revu. Never heard of it? No surprise. That's because it's largely a targeted product, namely, to those in professional fields where documentation is king: Law, construction, architecture, and a small host of others. What follows is a list of credits:
Bluebeam is much easier to use, much more responsive, and far better to look at. Take it from an information designer and former UX designer who cannot abide unintuitive, ugly, or buggy software.
Bluebeam handles LOADS. Very large PDF files, PDF Packages with built-in folders, documents on large sheets, splitting, extracting, and combining PDFs, PDF creation and conversion.. Done. Done. Done. And that list goes on.
Bluebeam is much, much less expensive. At $179.00 for a single Revu user licence, you're putting two (and a half) people to work for about the same price it takes to put one to work on Acrobat.
Bluebeam is already heavily used in construction, engineering, and architecture, and has had a few years to mature as a PDF and documentation solution.
Their customer support is very good, capable, and courteous.
Their user licences are transferable: Using it at work and need it at home? Save 179.00 and simply unregister your copy on the work PC before you leave, then register your copy on your home PC with the same credentials. Bluebeam will tell you so. (Just don't forget to unregister your home copy before going back to work the next day.)
Yes, there's a good, longish free trial that is fully functional. Once it expires, Bluebeam will still work as a PDF reader.
There's my micro-review of Bluebeam for you. No, it isn't perfect. I noticed a problem with creating PDF packages where too many folders will make them all disappear (I'm still working with support on that one), and as of this review it is still not available for Mac, though they are working on their first release this year. Nevertheless,once I started using it over a year ago, I was hooked. Acrobat is off my Get list, likely for good.
-R.