I found my wife a replacement for Adobe Acrobat Professional that will save her an infinite amount of money. As an attorney, she edits PDF files all day, and Adobe has been the only one with the right tool set. They are charging $25 a month. The new software, Wondershare PDF, has a perpetual license for $150, so we're giving Adobe the middle finger.
My New Year resolution might be getting rid of as many subscriptions as I can.
@That_One_Guy
There is a catch though, something I have been bitten from before.
"You own the software forever and have free minor updates within PDFelement 11 (Desktop). You might need to pay for major upgrades."
I am curious how it compares in performance to UPDF which is annual but includes multi-platform on 6 devices and the AI version has 100GB cloud storage.
@funguy2playwith @That_One_Guy still, even assuming that you pay for a major upgrade every year at full price (don't know about Wondershare but usually upgrades from previous versions get a discount) that is half the price Adobe is charging... and you maintain the option to not upgrade if you don't need to/can't afford to without loosing access to your software. It is not much of a catch.
@funguy2playwith
She has access to cross-platform, pretty much every one available. There is also AI and cloud storage, though she needs neither.
If it's like my photo editing software, it might require an investment every few years to get major upgrades, but it's usually $50 or less as a current lifefime license holder. It's still way cheaper than Adobe and no forced subscription.
@smilingdemon
@That_One_Guy @funguy2playwith @smilingdemon what’s your photo editing software? :)
@bekah
I use Affinity and Luminer Neo. They have different features, and I got them at different times. I think I've bought one upgrade package for Luminer and none for Affinity in 3 years.
@funguy2playwith @smilingdemon
@That_One_Guy @bekah @funguy2playwith I am assuming this was aimed at Brian, but I also use Affinity for my image editing needs these days (less often for photos, but it is what I do the compositing and postwork for my art).
@smilingdemon
It's functional software and doesn't expect money every month.
@bekah @funguy2playwith
@That_One_Guy @smilingdemon @funguy2playwith Thanks! Just what we all need more of! :)
@bekah @That_One_Guy @smilingdemon
- ShareX Editor for basic stuff
(It is my capture app and most of what I do)
- GIMP for when I need layers
@That_One_Guy Good for you! Adobe is a software slum lord as a disservice.
I particularly dislike the PDF format because its supposed primary feature (immutable representation of physical document) is neither immutable nor typically used to represent a physical document anymore.
In short, there is little reason to have the PDF format at all and Adobe makes so much $ despite this.
@That_One_Guy Oooo bookmarking this! I don’t have to do it often enough to justify a subscription (plus Adobe is ick) but it’d be nice to have something readily available when I do!
@aronow
There are apparently others, but most I found were tied to a subscription, though cheaper than Adobe. So far, this does everything she needs as well as Adobe.
@That_One_Guy excellent! I abhor subscription model software - still mad MS Office went from a disc I bought once at Best Buy to yearly subscription.
did you take a look at libreoffice draw?
@johnnyd_cm
She tried most of the free ones, and they don't have all the features she requires. I'll pass this one along for her to check out. The other software is under a 15 - or 30-day trial.
@That_One_Guy tyvm for this now-bookmarked post
@That_One_Guy literally one day away from my AAPro free trial to expire. Good info, thanks!
For others searching see also " PDF X-change Editor" & Editor Plus
https://pdf-xchange.eu/pdf-xchange-editor/
Windows only $56 - $72 perpetual license. I wish I found it years ago
@Sroot
I'm passing these to her as we haven’t officially bought anything. I'm just testing at this point. Wondershare was the 1st one with a perpetual license that performed all functions she needed.
@That_One_Guy Forwarded to a friend who has been grumbling about a nonconsensual and non-dismissible banner in his Acrobat celebrating AI features he does not use.
@That_One_Guy The first step for me was to install Ubuntu Linux. After that the road is clear
@jenselbaek
Her law practice software is only Mac and PC friendly or we would do the same...
@That_One_Guy Hi again. Maybe you should take a look at LibreOffice. (https://www.libreoffice.org/)
@That_One_Guy I bookmarked this to check it out after the holidays. I'm curious how your wife is doing with it? This is something that I'm interested in but am concerned about the "powered by AI" aspects of this app.
@starluna
She's using it on a laptop without internet capabilities, so the AI functions aren't working. Neither does cloud backups, but my wife has her own secured cloud storage and doesn't need AI. She's pretty sharp.
Almost every mainstream PDF editor has added some AI of some type. She's still trying a couple of others before committing to one.
@That_One_Guy Thank you. I'm going to ask my team to try them out too. I'll swing back and let you know what they say.
@That_One_Guy An update on it experience: I tried PDF-Xchange and obe if my staff tried Wondershare. Both work but I do prefer PDF-Xchange maybe because I didn't like the AI nonsense. Our computers are connected to the Internet. Our problem is that my key staff member uses a Mac and PDF-Xchange doesn't work on Macs.
Curious how your wife's experience has been and what other software she's tried in the last couple of weeks.