Tip-Of-The-Week

December 8, 2006

From the Free Computer Consultant

http://www.FreeComputerConsultant.com

A Better PDF Reader?

Before I get into today's tip, I want to draw your attention to a new page on my site dedicated to saving some money on your Holiday purchases. It's titled: Christmas $avings

I have saved over $100 on just a few purchases using these money saving ideas and I wanted to share them. I'll be saving even more as I continue to shop in the next week or two.

I'm even working on one other item to post later, maybe this weekend.

On to today's tip.

Last week I mentioned a free PDF writer, PrimoPDF. This week I highlight a PDF Reader that's an alternative to the free Adobe Acrobat Reader.

Well, what's wrong with Adobe Reader?, you might ask. It's Free, right?

#1 - It's SSLLOOOOOWWW.
#2 - Unless you tell it otherwise, it's always using your internet connection without telling you just to check for updates. I HATE that in a software. I just installed Acrobat v8 at some clients this week, and I'm not entirely sure one can turn off auto updates. See below.
#3 - Adobe puts icons on your desktop, your Start Menu (not in a sub-folder), and your STARTUP folder (Speed Launcher, does it help noticeably?). In fact, v8 puts TWO entries in the Startup folder. Perhaps the one, Adobe Synchronizer, is the auto updates, but I didn't have time to check that out. I got too excited when I found this new reader.
#4 - That stupid splash screen that sometimes takes forever while the program loads plug-ins for everything under the sun.
#5 - It just doesn't seem to negotiate the document the way you would expect it to - page, arrow keys, etc.
#6 - Did I mention it's slow?

Ok, your sold; or at least open to suggestion. Well here it is:

Foxit Reader 2.0 for Windows

As usual, it's free for PERSONAL USE. But that's good enough for most of us, right? Check it out and see if you don't think it's faster and does a better job of paging through the file. I was literally shocked at how PDF's just "pop" open. I've gotten so used to that blasted Adobe splash screen I thought the slowness was inherent in the PDF format. Foxit proves it isn't.

Here's one hint. If you decide to make it your default reader - it's polite and doesn't do that automatically - it's under Help on the toolbar: "Set to default PDF Reader".

As an aside, I have written elsewhere that years ago it was popular to have a list of "10 slowest software applications". Numbers 1 through 9 usually had Microsoft apps sprinkled in the mix with #10 being "anything else from Microsoft". Well along came Adobe and #11 could easily be "anything at all from Adobe". Their programs seem to act like slugs on the best of hardware.

Today's tip just might offer you an alternative to one of those honorees of "slowest software applications".

Hope this information is of use to you, that's it for this week.

When was the last time you backed up YOUR PC?

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the FreeComputerConsultant

http://www.FreeComputerConsultant.com