Getting gnome file manager to use acroread instead of xpdf

[Dave Carrigan <dave@rudedog.org>]

I am having a bear of a time getting the file manager to launch acroread
instead of xpdf when I double click on a .pdf file. It insists on
running xpdf. I went to the Control Center->File Types and selected the
application/pdf mime type. The default action is set to "Open with
Application" and I made sure that I had Adobe Acrobat Reader selected
from the popug menu. However, that didn't work; the file manager still
launched xpdf.

I tried editing the list and unchecking all applications except for
acroread. No joy. I tried adding a "My Acroread" application to the
list, with no luck.

In desperation, I did apt-get --purge remove xpdf, and the control
center doesn't even list xpdf as a candidate in the application popup
menu. However, when I double click a .pdf file, it says 

  Unable to open "/path/to/file.pdf" with the command "xpdf %f".

  To fix this, bring up the mime-properties editor, blah blah blah...

I even tried logging in with a freshly-created account, with no success.

Is there somebody out there that can give me a clue as to what's going
on?

Thanks,

Dave Carrigan