Nuance Aims to Take a Piece of Adobe`s Pie with PDF Converter Professional 5

Installation of the product consists of little more than running a setup program. Very little user interaction is needed to complete an install, but users must enter a valid serial number to make the product work. Nuance further protects the product by requiring the all too common "activation" sequence, which requires a user to activate the product via the Internet to continue using it before hitting the magic number of seven uses. With requiring activation, Nuance adds a nuisance to the product that is probably unnecessary and only penalizes legitimate users of the product. Luckily, that is probably the only irritating element that installers will encounter.

Once installed, the product offers three application options: the PDF Converter Assistant, the PDF Create Assistant, and the main application, PDF Converter Professional. Odds are that most users will spend most of their time with PDF Converter Professional and will use the other two applications sparingly. Those other two applications can also be called up via the main application, reducing the steps needed to perform that added functionality.

Using the product is driven by what you want to accomplish. For example, PDF Converter installs a printer driver into the system, which allows users to turn any printable document into a PDF. That in itself is not a unique feature, PDF creation is included with most office suites today and there are many other tools that can create simple a PDF.

Where PDF Converter Professional differs is with the options offered during "print to PDF" creation. Users can add watermarks, digital signatures, encryption, create search-able documents and insert identifying information. Many of those elements can be preset in the printer driver to ensure that PDFs conform to a business' policies.

While creation is an important consideration, the product's advanced features will prove to be the most valuable to organizations. Launching the main application allows access to previous created PDFs, of course, if you double click on a PDF, it will also launch the program. Either way, users are presented with a plethora of tools to work with PDFs.