Best (freeware) PDF Reader?

After years of using Adobe Reader I finally decided to have a look at a couple of other freeware PDF Readers. I have never liked Adobe for a variety of reasons & I have discovered that there are much better alternatives. Foxit & Tracker Software's PDF XC aka PDF-XChange Viewer seem to be the best, although there are popular others such as Sumatra PDF.

Foxit is very light but I had some problems with the plug-ins on both of my (Vista 32 bit) laptops. After uninstalling it & replacing it with PDF XC everything was fine. Foxit ran fine on my desktop (Win 7 64 bit) for a while but I found that it had some upgrading problems. Eventually I replaced it with *PDF-XChange Viewer as well. Both are good programs though & PDF XC has a lot of tools with it, including the ability to copy text from it, which is useful for me.

Has anyone else ditched Adobe Reader for anything?


*It is probably best to select the EXE Installer radio button for Windows to download PDF-XChange Viewer on that page.

 

Adobe Reader>>Bundled with either McAfee Security Scan or Google Toolbar
Option to Deselect before download/install

Foxit Reader>>Bundled with Foxit toolbar powered by ASK
Deselect Ask search provider & Ask home page
Select DECLINE during install if you don't want/need the Foxit Search bar

PDF-Xchange>>Bundled with Ask toolbar
Deselect the option to install Tracker Ask toolbar

I don't know if I have a point here, just that all are free and come with unneeded, possibly unwanted optional software

but out of the 3, I prefer the latter, been using PDF-Xchange for a couple years or so

 

Yeah, I make it a point to make sure I uncheck (or don't check) boxes in installation wizards of things I either don't want or don't know what they do. I suppose it's the price of 'freeware' these days LOL!

I need a reliable PDF Reader for work though, otherwise I would probably not have one on any of my computers. In fact, my desktop, which was custom built for me, didn't have Adobe Reader installed when I bought it.

I am quite satisfied with PDF XC (there is even a 64 bit version) & prefer it to Foxit, although it seems generally Foxit is the more popular.

 

I have been using Nitro PDF http://download.cnet.com/Nitro-PDF-Reader-32-bit/3000-10743_4-75205901.html?tag=mncol;10 for several months and like it fairly well. It is my default PDF program but from time to time I change back to Adobe just to stay current. I used FoxIt a couple of years ago but quit using it - don't remember why.

I don't make much use the tools that come with PDF readers so I can't make an overall assessment of Nitro's utility. It does convert files to PDF and lets you extract text and images for editing.

Added thought - I did have a recent problem opening a PDF file that a friend sent to me that was created/converted in PDF XC. Others using Adobe had a problem opening the file as well.

 

OK, thanks for the info Virginia. I think I have heard of 'Nitro'. It looks quite good & comparatively straightforward to use.

 

I use Adobe Reader.

 

Well, you could still have a look at alternatives I suppose. You can have multiple PDF readers not unlike multiple browsers. I found that Adobe was heavy & a bit of a pain in the arse to update. It is not the safest of applications either. It could seriously slow IE down to 'Not Responding' at times. To be totally honest, I'm glad to see the back of Adobe Reader. There are too many much lighter, safer & better alternatives released as freeware.

 

After years of having ditched Adobe's PDF reader, I have since come to rather like Acrobat 9. It never has problems rendering PDFs (I get a lot of them from a variety of sources, and have found other readers will sometimes be very slow to display text); but of course for editing, I love PDFXChange. It allows a LOT of customizing (more than any other reader, I've found). You can keep a list of pinned PDFs, and move the pinned to the top (like in MS Word); you can customize the toolbars, and their forum is incredibly helpful and freindly. I have experimented with Nitro, but since it is still a beta, have found some inconsistencies--but Nitro has a nice implementation of ribbons in a non-MS OFfice product, if that's your cup of tea.

 

Acrobat 9 sounds OK, I'm pretty sure it costs ££££ though! I still can't understand why Foxit seems to top the 'most popular' lists. It was a tad problematical for me & PDF XC seems to be superior in quite a few ways.

 

After trying PDFXChange, I've only used Foxit when I couldn't get PDFXC working right. The only reason I can think of their popularity is that they were the ONLY alternate PDF reader that anyone was talking about back in teh releases of Acrobat 6-7. I used it for a long time before I heard of other alternates as well.

That might not be a real explanation but its the best I've got.

 

It sounds about right. I suppose if people have been using Foxit for a long time & it is working fine there is no reason to change. I think it doesn't do well on Vista though. It seemed fine on Win 7 (64 bit) but it has one of the weirdest updaters I have ever seen & wouldn't upgrade when I tried it. I was so impressed with PDF XC on my laptops that I downloaded it onto my 64 bit desktop. To my surprise it downloaded a 64 bit version of it! It's nice when freeware turns out to be quite good.

 

Have a look here:http://www.filehippo.com/software/office/

I use Adobe and Foxit. Cheers Neil.

 

Heavy and vulnerable to viruses Acrobat I substituted for PDF-XChange and I was gratified at the outcome. I think PDF-XChange is the excellent for all kind of work.

 

Have you ever used Foxit Reader? I prefer PDF-XC to both Foxit & Adobe. Foxit isn't bad though, I just had a few problems with it. I would never go back to Adobe!

 

I updated to the PDF XC 2.5.188 with the updater on both my desktop (Win 7 64 bit) & laptop (Vista 32 bit) & the Ask toolbar was not included in the desktop upgrade but was on the laptop. Uninstalling from the toolbar itself was problematical but I uninstalled from the control panel.

Another thing that I noticed was that there were two PDF XC files in the control panel, the last stable release (I have been using PDF XC about a month) & the new one. I uninstalled the old one from my desktop & the whole PDF viewer was removed!

I re-installed from the homepage & everything is fine ... no Tracker/Ask toolbar.

Regardless of a sneaky attempt to put their toolbar on IE (which I hardly ever use anyway) I still prefer PDF XC to Adobe!

 

I've been using Foxit for several years now. It works great now. I use the USPS Click-N-Ship frequently and it wouldn't work without Adobe at first, but after a complaint to them, it started working. I hate bloatwear, and Adobe is great at that! With Foxit, I can do everything with a PDF that I want to. And as someone said above, you have to be really careful installing Foxit... guess thats how they are able to continue to put out a great product by the other "enhancements" that are bundled with it.

 

Not trying to flog a dead horse here, but Adobe Acrobat Reader X (version 10) has just been released, and (at least on my computer) it continues in the tradition of version 9.x, meaning it is much faster than earlier versions. It also has a higlighting tool, allowing you to select text and then highlight it with a different color. Not bad. If it opened up PDFs like this 3-4 years ago, I would never have moved to Foxit to begin with. I think the competition finally got their attention.

 

I ditch adobe also I use this program It was Free Samatra PDF
I also Like this program to create a PDF File
http://sourceforge.net/projects/pdfcreator/
It is simple to use and is real good program (and Boy do I like simple)
Foxit was ok but as you did I ran into a problem or 2.

 

Sumatra is ok if what you want is a pdf VIEWER, but it has incredibly limited functionality--last time I installed it it couldn't even select, copy, and paste text.

 

Psaulm119
what do u use as a pdfreader