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Before I forget, I thought I mention a couple of small programs that will make your PDF-viewing experience a little more enjoyable. It is no secret that with each release of Acrobat reader (now known as Adobe Reader), the program becomes larger is size and slower to boot. I am not a big fan of PDF files, altough I do understand their original purpose (the same document viewing experience cross-platform). But come on! Isn’t there a program that allows me just simply read the PDF files and that starts as fast as notepad?

Luckily for us the users, there are a couple of great programs to use instead of the all-powerful and convoluted Adobe reader, and the first one is called Foxit Reader.

This is a nice program because it appears to be backed up by a large company that also produces a paid program called ‘Foxit reader Pro pack’, which means that there are regular updates to their software. I used to have this program installed on my computers, until I found a much faster alternative, but with less functionality (but hey, I just needed to open and read the damned PDF files).

The second program, and the one I have been using for a long time now, is called SumatraPDF. It is very small (1.2 megabytes) and truly fast to load… right on the par with notepad.
There are a few quirks with it. It doesn’t fully support all PDF files out there, and there is no way to use interactive fields or forms embeded on PDF files while using this reader, but like I said, to read the ocassional PDF files, this little program outperforms Adobe reader in efficiency.

The following screenshots are from the program’s interface and while reading a standard PDF file:

 

Download Foxit reader for Windows: http://www.foxitsoftware.com/pdf/reader/
Download Sumatra PDF: http://blog.kowalczyk.info/software/sumatrapdf