Yesterday I just noticed that Adobe is using a Firefox installer for its Acrobat Reader 8.1 updates. After visiting the Acrobat download page, and hit the “Download Acrobat Reader”, I was waiting for a download box but the Firefox installer was launched instead. The downloaded simply download Adobe products, Decompress, then install the software on your system, with support for pause and resume.
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After investigation, I found that Adobe was using GetPlus intelligent download manager. The solution is commercial product of NOS Microsystems Ltd, and what I find interesting is that it mixes download management with compression in a very easy and neat way. Usually you download an installer then you run it yourself, now using such tools the download and install are managed automatically from the download manager. My satellite connection not that fast, but downloading the 8Mo of Adobe Reader was really very quick using this tool. Anyone can confirm if the procedure is the same for mac and Linux ?