Adobe Acrobat 9 Pro

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Adobe's Acrobat PDF creator is the industry standard, and with good reason. A comprehensive list of powerful tools, combined with a work environment capable of handling huge files and a well-designed interface make it the go-to program for PDFs.

Some of the newer features that impressed us include a range of annotation options; password and encryption for security; several signature preferences for making digital documents more official; automatically recognizing form fields; the ability to download entire Web sites and import them as PDFs; support for complex AutoCAD drawings; and a well-designed icon-based wizard to help the user figure out how to get it all done. You won't find any talking paper clips here.

Surprisingly, the biggest drawback isn't Acrobat's high price tag. To download the trial version, the user must register and fill out a survey at Adobe's Web site. Then you must wait for an e-mail to arrive with a link to the installer, which weighs in at 269MB and takes about 15 minutes to install.