Bye Bye Acrobat...

Working with computers on a everyday basis, you get familiar with the must have programs Office, IE, Winzip, and Acrobat.  Though you can get good alternatives, even free for Office, IE, and winzip (yes, winzip isn't free), Acrobat has always been a standard for viewing... well Acrobat files or PDF files as some might call them.  And since it is free what is the problem?

 

The problem with the most recent version (7.0x) of Acrobat is:

• Acrobat is huge (60 MB+ on the Hard Drive)
• Acrobat wants to startup when your computer does (check the startup group)
• Frequent updates
• Uses huge amounts of system memory (RAM).

With these issues and others (feel free to comment on your Acrobat issues), I was excited or maybe even more appropriately elated to find Foxit Reader a alternative PDF viewer.  Foxit Reader, like Acrobat Reader is free, but unlike Acrobat reader is only 1 MB to download.  You don't have to install Foxit, just unzip it to a location and open it once (after removing Acrobat reader) and it will open all your PDF files automatically. 

You will loss the ability to open a PDF directly in IE or Firefox (requires a download of the PDF to your desktop to view - hacks available to restore this function, but I am already tired of typing so I won't explain... Just Google it).  I also noticed a printing issue to a Konica Copier (inversed the text color to white with black boxes around it), but if you can live with these two small issues I recommend kicking Acrobat (the bloated) reader to the curb for Foxit Reader.

Thanks to DL.tv for mentioning Foxit Reader.

And for those who need to create PDF files try CutePDF Writer (also free)