Software applications are numerous. However, there are a few you simply cannot live without. I would argue the PDF is one of them. First introduced in the early 1990s by Adobe Corp., by the end of that decade, the "PDF" (Portable Document Format) eventually became the industry standard. In 2008 it became an open standard allowing much broader usage.

The PDF’s advantages are manifold. Perhaps the most noteworthy is that it can be used across all platforms and meets all the legal requirements to stand up in a court of law. That’s because a PDF file cannot be altered without leaving an electronic footprint.

If you get a PDF file, you know that it’s an original. You can have confidence that you’ve got a bona fide document that no one has messed with, and this counts for a lot. In an age where security is paramount, having this confidence is incalculable. With clients such as the IRS, you know the program is solid.

For "consumers," whether it’s a law office, a tech company or, in my case, an educational institution, being able to create documents that are tamper-proof is invaluable.

Let’s say I’m sending out a tutorial to my colleagues around campus or to students. Once this document is converted to a PDF, its "look" is conserved exactly as I intended. This includes fonts, spacing, photos, footnotes, etc. PDF documents are fully Web-enabled. Another cool PDF function is the ability to compress files and save space. This capability is especially handy if you are putting together a large document with text, graphs and photos that need to be emailed to students. Nobody likes one huge document that gobbles up bandwidth!

Outside of the educational space, PDF files are useful for a number of other areas. Documents such as magazine or newspaper articles, product brochures or fliers come to mind. You can also zoom in and out of PDF file page images or navigate forward and backward. Often you’ll find companies use PDF files for user manuals or product guides.

This brings us to Adobe Acrobat XI Pro, the latest incarnation of the original PDF editing program. Essentially Adobe has taken a program that’s exceptionally handy and made it more expedient to use in a number of ways. This includes improved text and graphics editing features, making it easier to combine multiple documents into a single PDF, and improved document-signing features. Adobe has also made it easier to access PDFs from any device, including the ubiquitous smartphone.

If you use commercial printers to produce paper brochures and documents, you will find that they normally require the original document to be submitted online as a PDF. There are a number of versions of the PDF standard, and one of those is specifically for commercial printing. This allows an absolute match for colors and fonts between the computer-based original and the printed copy. Our on-campus design and print center is experimenting with requiring all duplication orders to be submitted in print-standard PDF.

One of the areas that Adobe Acrobat Pro uses to maintain its market share is forms creation. The latest version of Acrobat is excellent for creating forms that can be distributed via the Web or email, or traditionally printed. This is a very powerful tool that is often ignored.

Acrobat XI comes in two commercial versions, Acrobat XI Pro ($449, upgrade $199) and Acrobat XI Standard ($299, upgrade $139). Graphics and enterprise customers will want to use the "Pro" version. For the rest of us, the "Standard" version is just fine.

Mike Meyer, formerly Internet general manager of Oceanic Time Warner Cable, is now chief information officer at Honolulu Community College. Reah him at mmeyer@hawaii.edu