.PDF Reader

**A Nerd** · 02-05-2011, 00:36

I wanted to read and download some documets as of late. They were in .pdf form. But my computer cannont read them. I saw a site to download something to read them for about 12 dollars for a 3 year contract. Is this good? Any free ones I might not be familiar with somewhere? I have a phobia about downloading free stuff to my computer for fear of viruses.

**CBR** · 02-05-2011, 00:41

Just get Adobe Reader. There are several others that are free too.

http://get.adobe.com/reader/

**Lemur** · 02-05-2011, 01:12

Adobe Reader is okay, but it's a memory hog and it updates way too often. I prefer Foxit Reader, even if you have to turn off some browser junk it tries to install. At least it doesn't plant a startup service and update five times a month, requiring restarts.

**CBR** · 02-05-2011, 01:52

Foxit is an option yes and it might be using less resources, although I don't think that is a problem on a modern pc?

But I cannot get the same clear and sharp text on Foxit compared to Adobe, or maybe I'm doing something wrong.

**Togakure** · 02-05-2011, 01:53

I just remove any unwanted startup items using StartupMonitor, a small freebie utility developed by Mike Lin. I've been using it for years, and as simple as it is, it serves its purpose well. There are probably lots of other things like it, but I mention it because it makes managing startup stuff very easy, and can act as a watchdog over the startup areas.

When something tries to write to any of the startup areas, StartupMonitor can be set to prompt and ask you if you want to allow it. Sometimes this is a minor annoyance, but most of the time I smile, because I might not have noticed it otherwise.

When you open the utility from control panel, it shows all the startup areas, what's loaded in them, and allows you to turn stuff on or off via a checkbox.

With Adobe Reader, after I use it, I just close any related TSRs in the lower right on my task bar, and then CNTL-ALT-DEL and kill the associated process tree from Task Manager. Then again, I don't use it that often nowadays; someone who uses it often might find this tedious.

For what it's worth.

**A Nerd** · 02-05-2011, 02:23

Thanks for the quick feedback everyone. I will be downloading one soon. :)

**Xiahou** · 02-05-2011, 05:13

Originally Posted by Lemur

Adobe Reader is okay, but it's a memory hog and it updates way too often. I prefer Foxit Reader, even if you have to turn off some browser junk it tries to install. At least it doesn't plant a startup service and update five times a month, requiring restarts.

Ditto. Foxit is far less obnoxious than Acrobat.

**Sasaki Kojiro** · 02-05-2011, 06:36

I used to have foxit, but now I apparently have "pdf xchange viewer". It works great though.

**Furunculus** · 02-05-2011, 12:10

sumatra pdf:

http://blog.kowalczyk.info/software/...apdf/news.html

**Lemur** · 02-05-2011, 14:21

Originally Posted by Furunculus

sumatra pdf:

Oooooo, daddy like ...

**CBR** · 02-05-2011, 14:45

Ok I just checked out the others: Sumatra cannot change font/background color so that is a big minus for those who want that type of flexibility.

Overall Adobe still provides sharper text but if I had to pick the best of the other three I would say Foxit with Sumatra at the bottom.

Edit: a test with pure scanned images shows very different result. There Adobe is at the bottom as text appear jagged. The other 3 are near equal, so difficult to say which is the best.

Edit 2: another image pdf shows no big difference between them. Scan was of overall good quality though.

All very interesting and IMO shows the need of more than one PDF reader to cover all possiblities

**Husar** · 02-05-2011, 15:26

I'm using Foxit, back when I switched to it, Adobe was slooooow, scrolling down fast for example wasn't possible as it had to reload a lot every few pages, with Foxit that wasn't a problem at all.
Haven't really tried Adobe ever since and don't miss it. Sumatra sounds interesting but looks a bit too much toned down from the pics google came up with.