While not as elegant.... for those that don't like getting into the registry here is what I did following the advice of the knowledgeable people here

created Wisptis.txt in windows\system32 folder using notepad
renamed wisptis.exe to wisptis.old in windows\system32 folder
renamed Wisptis.txt to wisptis.exe

and when I rebooted and launched Acrobat.... no Wisptis

( why on earth did Adobe include this ... Reader 6 is a mess - just look a the size of it - a 30 meg memory req just to browse a PDF!)

Thanks to everybody here for their help