Which edition of Acrobat

[deB]

Hi, y'all. I've just started at a new company, outside the graphic arts (gasp!), where we don't yet have publishing tools inhouse. We'll be getting Acrobat, but I'm not sure which edition to get.

I know about the official comparison matrix http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/matrix.html, but I've heard of a useful feature I don't see listed: the ability to reach into a PDF and extract a content object, e.g. an embedded graphic. What do I need, to do that? (Maybe only Illustrator can do that.)

I'm also leery of a new version, specifically the not yet released version 8. I've been using 6. Aside from the bloat factor, I was very disappointed when Find was "improved" in 6. I use Find a *lot*. It used to be that Find would just hop to the first occurrence, but now it seems I have to wait while Acrobat generously searches the whole flippin' PDF. (Am I overlooking a switch to stop that behavior?)

To me that wasn't a wise product decision, so as I say, I'm leery of what other "improvements" might be lurking in 8, never mind 7. (Bitch bitch bitch.)

I'm open to third-party PDF tools, too, but I don't want them to be cheap junk stripped-down "works pretty good, most of the time" stuff, so I'm inclined to stick with the Adobe product.

Thoughts?