What is al this adobe stuff? I have 4 different things on my computer?

Question

I have:

Adobe Acrobat Reader 3.01
Adobe Reader 7.0

Adobe Shockwave Player
Adobe Flash Player

What are the difference? Do I need all of these?

Thanks

Answer 1

Adobe Reader allows you to view PDF documents on your computer. With just the reader, you cannot CREATE PDFs, but you can view, and if the creator of the document has allowed, make comments to it through Adobe Reader. However, you don't need both 3.01 and 7.0, so you're safe removing 3.01 from your system, though it will hurt nothing to leave it on there.

Shockwave and Flash are plugins for viewing interactive web content. Any of these websites you go to with lots of animated content and interactivity are usually using Flash (right click somewhere on the animation, and if you see "About Adobe Flash Player..." displayed, it's Flash content. YouTube, Google Video, and countless other websites use that, so you'll definitely want to keep that. Shockwave is just a similar plugin, but I very rarely see it used any more. Never hurts to have it installed though, so just leave it alone. :)

Answer 2

you can get rid of reader 3.01. the others are handy