How to make Adobe Reader suck a little less…
One of the things I hate the most about Adobe Reader is how it bugs users to update it every second freakin’ day. Well, here’s a way to deal with this.
First of all, download Adobe Acrobat Reader (or any Adobe product for that matter, but lets just talk about Adobe Acrobat Reader for the moment). Now, extract the .exe by using the following command (adjust the filename as required) “AdbeRdr80_en_US.exe -nos_ne“. This will give you the .msi and .cab files. Grab them from %temp% and put them some more useful.
Now, head over and grab the Adobe Customization Wizard (those american’s and their pesky z’s!). Open the MSI file you created, and then use the tool to create a Transform (.mst) file. Use this file to deploy Acrobat Reader - either manually (bad!) via “adobe_setup_file.msi transforms=transform_you_created.mst” or via Group Policy (good!).
Enjoy. 
Edit:
11/07/2008
Good ol’ Adobe - changing things around for the fun of it. With Acrobat Reader 9.0, the command above is obviously slightly different due to a different file name (duh), however it also seems to extract the file into a different location - instead of %temp%, it now seems to end up in “%userprofile%\Local Settings\Application Data\Adobe\Reader 9.0\Setup Files”.
Oh, and the old Customization Wizard (linked above) doesn’t work with Acrobat Reader 9.0. According to this document, “Customization Wizard 9 will be available soon after the release of Reader 9″. Way to go Adobe - release the product before you’ve got all the freakin deployment tools working for it as well. Watch this space.
18/08/08
The version 9 wizard has been released and can be found here.
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Let’s face it, Adobe updater is a dog turd sprinkled with dirt and wrapped up in silver paper so that Adobe can call it a Christmas pudding. Whatever happened to user control and realistic sized patches? (I know, I know, Microsoft killed both of them long ago). Adobe: “your 400mb program needs an update to correct the pixel positioning of the Bidelonian* umlaut used for transitive verbs, you must download this 400mb patch”. Whiskey Tango Foxtrot!!! I don’t even use Bidelonian* umlauts. What planet are those Adobe people from? Its a patch, a patch for the love of all things soft and cuddly. If I notice a hole in a piece of fabric I may (old school as it sounds) cut a small square of fabric and “patch” the hole. I don’t buy a whole new piece of fabric and burn the original. Considering that many of us had to sell a kidney to afford Adobe’s products in the first place the least they could do is provide decent… nay intelligent methods for maintaining the damn things. Alright I’ll shut up now. (*Note Bidelonian is not a real language, and has been used for analogy purposes only)