Adobe Acrobat 8.1 direct download links and some nice custom transforms!

Spotted this over at Steathpuppy.com:

I really do not like automated auto-installs from websites without an option to download a stand-alone executable. Adobe has joined this trend with the release of Acrobat Reader 8.1.

9 times out of 10, I am merely going to a website to download an install file so I can install deploy the package on a different or internet-crippled computer. I like direct firewall/proxy friendly HTTP links, not automated Active-X or Java applets, or better yet, a FTP site that has resume capability.

With that said, make sure to check out this page on Adobe's site for actual .EXE installs of Adobe Acrobat Reader 8.1, or use an alternative PDF viewer, which has direct download links.

If you are merely looking for the link to the English version of Acrobat Reader 8.1, simply click here.

Before finding this on StealthPuppy, I had been downloading Acrobat on a client computer, and tracing the file activity with Process Monitor to find where the package uncompresses after download. IT admins really shouldn't be required to do silly things like this.

Also over at StealthPuppy are some nice MSI transforms for Acrobat 8.1.

Update: Leslie Smith pointed me to another good PDF alternative with multiple rendering engines: Sumatra PDF viewer, and a nice portable version located here. Thanks Leslie!

Update 2: Here is where I potentially put my foot in my mouth. Arian van der Pijl points out that Adobe has an FTP site with full MSI packages available for download here. I still stand behind the original intent of my post though because I looked for a good 15 to 20 minutes on Adobe's website to try to find a direct download link. Thanks Arian.