Adobe announced the immediate availability of Adobe Acrobat 8 on Thursday.

The new versions of Adobe's PDF creation, editing and viewing applications are Universal Binary, allowing them to run natively on PowerPC and Intel-based Macs. Acrobat 8 includes new tools to combine multiple PDFs, create PDF packages from multiple documents, collaborate on document reviews, preflight and fix problem documents, remotely display presentations and view other user's desktops, and more.

Adobe also announced a Web-based collaboration service called Acrobat Connect. The service lets Acrobat users work together in "always on" meeting rooms through a Web browser.

Acrobat 8 Professional is priced at US$449, and upgrades from qualifying earlier versions cost $159. Acrobat 8 Standard costs $299, and qualifying upgrades are $99.

The free Adobe Reader 8 should be available in early December.

Acrobat Connect is available as a free trail through the end of December. Monthly subscription fees are expected to be about $39 a month per personal meeting room.