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not vw: pdf readers

amazeer - May 13th, 2010 at 10:41 PM

DOH! I've just treid to open a series of pdf's and they have all failed. I guess this shouldnt be too surprising, up until now I have been using adobe reader 5.

What the hell, I've had a good run, now to go download the latest version from adobe. Its a freakin 32MB download! You have got to be kidding? Version 5 fully installed is only taking up 12! How much junk have they loaded it with?

So wondering who is using an alternative. Foxit seems to have a good review on cnet.. only 6mb

warb - May 13th, 2010 at 11:34 PM

your having a cry over 32meg? .. you on dialup or something?!.. :rolleyes: 32meg from adobe should pull down in a few minutes max... if your having issue with PDF its prob the PFD itself not the reader.. peace..

Bizarre - May 14th, 2010 at 08:04 AM

a lot of new PDF's wont work on older versions
Doubt others will as well
Just down load Adobe 9

Vanders - May 14th, 2010 at 08:27 AM

If you want a small download pdf reader with less features than Acrobat try Sumatra PDF. It's quick to load pdf's.

modulus - May 14th, 2010 at 08:29 AM

Micro$oft Word 2010 reads and writes PDFs cleanly. It's an expensive option relative to Adob reader, but if you have to have Office anyway, then you'll have PDF capability.

hth

amazeer - May 14th, 2010 at 09:21 AM

Its not about download limits its about the lead weight a program puts on the system. My home PC is dual boot. Exact same Windows XP operating system installed from the same cd obviously using the same ram and cpu. One system is bare bones. open office, mozilla, filezilla, apache, textpad, broadcast, visual studio... adobe reader 5 and unfortunately due to an issue I had a couple of weeks back avg and malware bytes. None of these are kept up to date with latest patches. Its all installed on an old 40gig IDE hard drive. Boots up in about 1 minute. The other has all the microsoft updates, adobe 7, microsoft office, i tunes, network magic, all the bloated crap software, sitting on a big new fangled SATA hard drive. When you start it up you walk away and put the kettle on. Then you put your password in, walk away make some toast, then you come back and its just about finished sending all your details off into the ether. My first computer was a 486. I dont recall it ever being any slower than this. Because shit software designers put in too much fat and dont worry about writing efficient code. I have an add on for visual studio itextsharp which creates pdf's. It is 1.2MB download. Create a pdf = 1.2 View a pdf 32. I'm not enthused about a 32meg download just to VIEW a pdf. Screw you Mr Adobe.

Its not the pdf itself because adobe 7 reads them just fine.

modulus - May 14th, 2010 at 10:02 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by amazeer
... Create a pdf = 1.2 View a pdf 32. I'm not enthused about a 32meg download just to VIEW a pdf....

Without defending Adobe (i quite dislike most of their products) I have to ask, have you ever read the PDF spec? It's a damn sight harder to read (any, randomly selected) PDF than write one. To write one, you select a single path through the standard and stick to it. To read one, you've got to be prepared to encounter the myriad paths that the writer could have taken, including compression and encryption in 46 flavours. Just reading the spec (let alone implementing it) is daunting and that's why the readers tend to be more complex than the writers.

hth

tikbalang - May 16th, 2010 at 02:31 AM

i'm still using foxitpdf. it's faster than sumatra on my old p3 but it's slowly becoming a commercial product.