After receiving a PDF without form fields, I realized that I hadn't reinstalled Adobe Acrobat since reformatting my primary PC. Looking around for the CDROM came up empty and so faced with a choice of:
1) Buying a new license.
2) Finding some freeware.
3) Screen capturing (fill out in Paint).
4) Rental License Acrobat.
The winner was item 3 because the recipient (govt agency) should already have ALL this information anyway. I would have gladly paid a hundred bucks+ for a new perpetual license but that's no longer an option. Hours of searching and trying freeware is a prescription for lost billable time, only leading to 'less than optimal' results. Lastly subscription (renting periodically), the problem with that isn't the actual price but rather the hassle of keeping up with the subscription. There are so many to keep up with and like many of you here, I have to live with my office manager and so I wouldn't pawn it off.
In summary, Autodesk and MS Office is the ONLY things we pay a subscription on, because we HAVE to have them. Otherwise, we do without and/or work around it, which is surprising easy to do.
I would much rather buy a product that I can use until it becomes obsolete, because of the hassles.
Not a solution to the perpetual license issue, bet Revu by Bluebeam is more featured and suited to the type of work we do, and is similar in pricing to Acrobat. They quit perpetual licensing a year or so ago and moved to annual subscriptions. It won't be long before perpetual licensing for software in general has completely gone the way of the dodo.
I'd have a hard time paying for MS Office when LibreOffice is available. Free. They'd like you to send them a contribution but you don't have to.
Carlson's version of IntelliCAD is a very capable alternative to AutoCAD. The annual renewals are very nominally priced or you can forego them altogether if you prefer.
Foxit is moderately priced pdf editor for purchase. There are others.
Check out PDF XChange. It's not as smooth as Revu but I believe it's still free and allows editing, merging, splitting, setting a scale and measuring.