Information Addicts

Do you find Adobe PDF reader slow to load, is always trying to install plug-ins and add-ons, and often freezes?
Then read on, as below are 3 great free pdf readers that have a smaller footprint, open documents quicker, and don’t try to constantly install featureless extras like Adobe does.

PDF XChange viewer.

Although this application has the biggest file size at 13.2MB, don’t let that put you off, as it is still half the size of Adobe reader and much faster.
It opened a 497 page pdf document in seconds.
This application has the most features of all three, and is the only one that allows you to add comments and annotations to any PDF file, unlike the Adobe viewer which requires the PDF creation tool to be certified by Adobe.

You will find PDF XChange very easy to use and navigate around, it offers Firefox style tabbed browsing, viewing all open documents as thumbnails, and bookmarking pages.
Here are some more of its features
Markup pages with text and objects
Type directly on any PDF page
Export PDF pages or entire files to any one of the supported image formats BMP, JPEG, Tiff, PNG and many more.
Extract text from a PDF page file
Fill and save Adobe forms to disc, e-mail or post.
Overall this application offers a lot for free, and has an attractive set of features not commonly found in free PDF viewers.

Foxit Reader 2.2.

The first version of Foxit reader was less than 1MB in size, the latest version is 2.13MB which is still remarkably small for such an application.
Foxit loads up as fast as PDF XChange viewer but doesn’t have all the functionality of it. However the free version does allow you to add comments and annotations to any PDF file, but when you save the file and reopen it you are left with a stamp on the document in red letters that reads “Edited by Foxit reader copyright etc”, which looks unsightly. In order to use the annotation tool, form filler, spellchecker, you need to upgrade to Foxit reader Pro Pack, at a cost.
Don’t get me wrong this latest version of Foxit reader is excellent, and unless you are doing some serious creating/editing of PDF’s, Foxit will do the job admirably.

Overall this application does what it says on the tin and much quicker than Adobe reader. However I found it quite frustrating when I wanted to use some of the tools on the menu bar and was constantly prompted to upgrade if I wanted to use any of the ‘extra’ features, personally I think that they should be left out of the application.

Sumatra PDF.

Weighing in at 802KB this by far the smallest pdf viewer, has the least functions and has a very minimalistic design.
If you’re travelling around and need to view PDF files quickly from a USB flash drive, iPod or portable hard disk then this could be your answer, as once the file is downloaded onto the device, it doesn’t need to be installed.

Overall this is a very basic but capable PDF viewer and is still in Beta mode, again it does its job well.

Which one is for you? I have all of them installed on my pc (except for Sumatra as it doesn’t need installing), to be honest I prefer PDF XChange viewer. It depends on your needs but as they are such small applications why not try each one and then decide.
Let me know which one you like best.
Which PDF viewer do you currently use?

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 5th, 2007 at 10:48 am and is filed under PC Software. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.