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A Faster Way to View PDF Files

For years, most of us have used Adobe’s free Acrobat Reader, later named Adobe Reader, to view PDF files. PDF stands for Portable Document Format and is the easiest way to distribute files and forms to many people without worry about compatibility. Like most commercial software, Adobe’s product used to be small, fast and work well. Since version 5 (now they are on 8), the product has become as bloated as many other big name software packages today. It remains free, but will plague your system with slow performance and lots of many irritating automatic updates.

Today, a Windows 98 customer of mine was having trouble with his Adobe Reader versions 5 and 6. After doing some research, I remembered a small, free program called Foxit PDF Reader that does exactly what Adobe Reader does but in an extremely small package. The Foxit download is barely over 2 megabytes which is just 1/10th that of Adobe’s 22.3 megabyte behemoth.

If you are looking to get better performance from your PDF reader software, give Foxit a try. It works for all Windows versions from 95 through Vista.

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 26th, 2007 at 9:15 pm and is filed under Riding Shotgun with Rick. You can follow any comments to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a comment, or trackback from your own site.

3 comments

  1. Anonymous
    January 1, 2008 at 3:40 am

    Tuesday 1 January 2008

    Dear Rick and Adam,

    Thank you for the tip to try the Foxit PDF Reader.

    I found it to be outstanding!

    The only negative aspect is that I don’t get to take a nap any more while waiting for the Adobe Reader to open. I guess you can’t have everything here in life.

    HAPPY NEW YEAR!

    Please keep on keeping safe and well there.

    Yours, ever faithfully,
    Thomas
    DALBY, SWEDEN

    Reply
  2. Anonymous
    September 19, 2008 at 2:00 pm

    Hi Rick,
    I have a new hard drive, and need a PDF reader program (I’ve already installed Cute PDF writer). I installed Fox It, but it does not have the capability (that I can see) to “Print Current View” if I have zoomed in on a document.
    Is there a way to print only the section of a document I have zoomed to? Otherwise, it looks like I’ll have to put Adobe on the computer.
    Thanks,
    Lisa Roberts

    Reply
  3. Rick
    September 20, 2008 at 11:13 am

    Yes, FoxIt reader has the “print current view” option after you click File –> Print. To use it:

    1. Zoom in and adjust document to what you watn
    2. Click File –> Print
    3. Under the “Print Range” section, choose the “current view” option
    4. Click OK

    Reply

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