The machine's only six months old, though, and I hadn't signed up for the service, so I certainly had never used with AIR if it were on this PC. I didn't recall installing with AIR on my system, but I can't verify that it wasn't installed prior to the update to version 9.2, either. If a user already has a previous version of Adobe Reader 9.x installed on his/her system and the Adobe Updater delivers that person the version 9.2 update (the latest dot release update to their existing product), on Adobe AIR is not included.' '(I)f a user downloads the full installer of Adobe Reader 9.2 (Windows or Macintosh in English) from the 'Get Adobe Reader' page on, the on Adobe AIR application will be included. Adobe spokesperson John Cristofano told me the following via e-mail: I contacted Adobe to ask them about this. I couldn't find it offered on Adobe's site minus the add-on I didn't want. I hadn't signed up for -registration is required to use the service-I just wanted the Adobe Reader update. Thanks to CNET member baddy_3- for pointing this out. Update, October 27, 2009: The Adobe site is now offering the Adobe Reader 9.2 upgrade without the with Adobe AIR component. It was formerly called Create Adobe PDF Online. This is a Web service for sharing and collaborating on documents. But the 45MB download included a separate program: with Adobe AIR. So when I heard last week about an important security update for Adobe Reader 9, I hurried to the Adobe site to download the new version 9.2. (I wrote about the importance of keeping your apps updated in a post from last April.) Along with Sun's Java, Adobe's Flash Player, and Apple's QuickTime media players, it's imperative that you keep your PDF reader up-to-date to prevent it from becoming an entryway for viruses. Unfortunately, the ubiquity of Adobe Reader and other PDF software has made the format a target for malware perpetrators. PDF has been the de facto standard for document exchange since the mid-1990s, but it wasn't an official ISO standard until 2008. Adobe Systems' Portable Document Format (PDF) is one of the great successes of the software industry.

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