Gene, you're (as always) the voice of reason. For an industry that (in large companies, anyway) is willing to adopt newer, faster, spiffier equipment, it's ironic that the print industry has trouble adopting newer, faster, spiffier ways of thinking. That little button in Acrobat isn't a threat: it's a wake-up call. Printing companies should be asking, "Hey, how can *we* get *our* cute little button in the Acrobat toolbar?"

I disagree with Gene and the other commenters. I can appreciate the plight of the smaller printers and the savvy of FedEx/Kinkos. To say that the small guy can compete based on great service, support and relationships is not always or even usually the case. So many times I see good companies, well-run with an abundance of those three items get run over by the larger company with ultra-competitive pricing and 'the name'. I think the assumption of Gene would be correct if everyone (including ourselves) were very discriminating buyers and everything we purchase. Unfortunately, the fact is that at the speed people and business run these days, what is convenient is what is used much of the time. In these situations, big will win.

Oh and another opinion about big - it is never satisfied that it is big enough. Imagine if Adobe/FedEx/Kinkos got hungrier and started offering design services as well. What if they grew this option to where they had a tiered set of service levels depening on the type of client and needs. Imagine if they head-hunted appropriate designers to fill the different niches service levels. Then imagine that your customers or mine had exclusive access to these designers via Adobe Acrobat and Reader. How many of our clients would be interested in the convenience, maybe just some small jobs to start and then, with satisifaction of completed jobs, the jobs started getting bigger. Unheard of? I'm not so sure. What about the level of service, support and relationships I/you have provided them over the years? Well, thanks, but this is awfully convenient.

Back in the 80's when we watched the hammer smash the screen to announce the arrival of Macintosh, we traditional board layout designers could see doom on the horizon. But a significant number of us got on board with the emerging technology and experienced an exciting new range of opportunities. When processor speed and massive storage "democratized" the video editing industry, my husband could see doom on the horizon ...but he, too, climbed on and rode the technology wave. Now we are retired, and content ourselves to watch most of it go by, but we still cheer each new innovation, and hope the "young ones" will seize the day and move on. I have spent the past few years uploading graphics directly to printers all over the country from my desert Eden away from the madding crowd, and have created my own little button to streamline the process. So, what's new about that? Adobe's little button link to Kinkos could have provided a window on another Brave New World for independent designers ...and printers who market similar links. Too bad.

While printers may have their own concerns, we don't care to have a corporate-based printing agenda, anymore than we care to be given the choice to buy any car so long as it's a Ford. Far more functional would be for Adobe to add an editable drop-down menu wherein we can insert our printers of choice for any given type of project (be it book or brochure or one-sheet) and where, if they so choose, they can add FedEx Kinko's as a deletable alternative. It's counter-productive for us to have to train staff NOT to use a button on Acrobat, and we obviously aren't going to send a one-sheet to a web press, or a book to Fed-Ex-Kinko's, so why not allow us to make the choice? We aren't printers ourselves, but we object strenously to the MacPrinter philosophy that says that "everyone" (whoever "everyone" is) goes to the same provider. FedEx thought Kinko's was such a good idea, it bought the place. What if FedEx Kinko's thought Adobe was such a good idea that ... well, would you buy FedEx-Kinko-Acrobat?