CHICAGO, NECC, June 25 Adobe Systems Incorporated, the leader in network publishing, today unveiled the latest version of Adobe PageMaker software to the educational market at the National Educational Computing Conference (NECC). New features in Adobe PageMaker 7.0 are ideally suited to the needs of educators and education publishers, with Herff Jones and Jostens being early adopters of the technology. The latest version of PageMaker supports tighter integration with Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator software, easy output of documents to tagged Adobe Portable Document Format (PDF) files, simple conversion of materials from Microsoft Office applications, and a data merge feature that streamlines the integration of PageMaker with database information. "With PageMaker 7.0, Adobe is building on the software's strengths and better supporting education users as they rush to meet deadlines for professional-looking materials, such as yearbooks and newsletters,'' said Eric Loring, marketing manager for publishing technology at Jostens. "PageMaker 7.0 provides educators with enhanced productivity through tighter integration with key business applications, including Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator,'' said Susan Altman Prescott, vice president of cross- media publishing at Adobe. "PageMaker 7.0 brings Adobe's network publishing vision directly to the classroom through the tagged PDF and data merge features that enable personalized content to be viewed on any device, anytime, anywhere, all while maintaining the same professional-quality results educators expect from PageMaker.'' By working with education industry leaders such as Herff Jones and Jostens, Adobe enhanced the functionality of Adobe PageMaker 7.0, while maintaining its familiar look and feel; this is critical since many educators who use PageMaker have no formal desktop publishing training, yet require advanced design capabilities. "Adobe PageMaker 7.0 does an excellent job of mixing the old with the new,'' said Susan O'Connor, teacher at Coral Reef High School in Miami. "Basic commands and the look of the software are the same, so training students is as easy as ever. At the same time, support for Illustrator and Photoshop files and easy output of materials to Adobe PDF give students better ways of collaborating and sharing materials.'' Students and teachers can import Photoshop or Illustrator designs directly into PageMaker 7.0. Also, the ability to output PageMaker 7.0 files to tagged Adobe PDF files is important as more classes use wireless devices to save notes and view materials. For instance, education materials created in PageMaker 7.0 can be converted to Adobe PDF and automatically reflowed so that finished documents can be viewed in print, on the Web, or with wireless devices and PDAs. "Adobe PageMaker offers users flexibility in developing materials that are as simple or as complex as they want, making it the application of choice for educators working on a range of projects,'' says Karen Johnson, production editor at Herff Jones. "That's one of the biggest advantages of PageMaker. People can sit down with PageMaker, receive a little training, and in no time, can create pages that look like they were done by professionals.'' Pricing and Availability PageMaker 7.0 will be available in summer 2001 to customers in the United States and Canada through Adobe Authorized Resellers and the Adobe Store at their site. Estimated street price will be US$499 for the full product and US$79 for upgrades from previous versions. PageMaker 7.0 will be available to educators for the estimated street price of US$289 for the full product and US$79 for upgrades from previous versions. Adobe PageMaker supports Mac OS 8.6 (with Apple Software Font Manager Update version 1.0), 9.1, OS X (Classic), as well as Microsoft Windows 98, Windows NT 4.0 with Service Pack 5 or 6, Windows 2000 or Windows ME.