Adobe Acrobat, Speed MegaBump of the Internet

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It happened again. I click on an Adobe Acrobat document at a distant website, the website is slow or none existent to respond, I try to escape via the escape key, and then via the CTRL-ALT_Delete, and my entire laptop freezes. To get back to work, I have to unplug both the power supply and remove the battery, and then restart, redial, and login in again. A total and complete waste of my time by Adobe. It happens about once every three days, and this time I vowed I'd write it up.

I try to avoid Acrobat anytime I can, because I know it is such a gamble. When Googling, I always go for the html.

It is very arrogant of Adobe to grab such deep control of my machine, and then not offer a simple way out. They can afford programmers who can write:

1. Something which determines the size of the document, and gives you a chance to opt out of the process.

2. A graceful way to stop a download in progress and return to the last page.

3. A way to preview the document by downloading the document table of contents first for review.

4. A way to pick and choose chapters for downloading.

5. A cheaper way to upgrade the latest version of the full product, instead of going for $100/year as they seem to be doing.

I want to commend Netmeter and Snort, plus ZoneAlarm and Computer Associates, and last but not least, Steve Gibson at Gibson Research Corporation, www.grc.com for all working to keep my machine free of the baddies. I feel like the CIA in the Spy vs Spy World, of who's buggering my computer now? Except that here CIA stand for Computer Information Analysis, a job I used to do for San Francisco Unified School District. Running Snort seems to drive off the pirates fairly well. The combination of all of the above allows me to such down anything suspicious and then redial for a new IP addy, for those critters that get around the normal firewall and antivirus protections.