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Wednesday, April 14, 2010

I Guess No One Minds Adobe's Heaviness

Every program update of Adobe Reader gets worse and worse, in my opinion. They weight it down, but don't add anything that I find useful. Adobe 9.3 is 37.3 Mb which is more than double the previous version. Every program "update" is double in size. Everyone says bad things about Microsoft, but no one ever bashes Adobe. Why is that?

Maybe I'm being too cranky about this, but I don't think so. Maybe other programs are bigger than 37.3mb, but other programs are programs, not a pdf reader. PDF= portable document format which means you can read the document and print it out on any printer. It's not a fully functioning word processor or desktop publishing system.

How big are Adobe's small-guy competitors?
FoxIt Reader 6.67 mb
Kumatra 1.2 mb 

Both are super easy to download and install. There's others that require a little effort to install.

If you have complicated raster graphics or optical character recognition, you may not be able to use them, but I've never had a problem reading with either of them. I have noticed that you can't fill in forms in Kumatra, but you can print them out and then fill them in. I, personally, have never had a problem with forms in foxit reader.

If you are needing a full-fledged pdf creator and editor, Foxit has a suite for 99$ where Adobe's Acrobat Standard is almost 300$.

Every person's need varies. Some people need form capabilities and some special graphics or fonts. It's worth evaluating your needs and making an informed decision rather than accept what came installed on your computer as the only way to view a file.

It's something to ponder, and it's my two cents.

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