Brilliant Freeware Reader Tools – A Substitute For Adobe Acrobat Reader
PDF or Portable Document Format is considered as the best format for circulating electronic documents. A file saved in PDF format retains the same look (layout, font and formatting) on screen or when printed, regardless of the type of computer or printer being used and regardless of the software originally used in order to create it.
PDF format offers a reliable and convenient way to publish data including text, graphics and tables. Majority of users use Adobe Acrobat Reader, a free viewer by Adobe to view or read PDF files downloaded from the internet or received via email.
However, Acrobat Reader takes too long to open a PDF file which turns out to be quite irritating and frustrating, especially when the PDF file is large in size. Also waiting until the splash window disappears to open the PDF file is pretty annoying. Moreover, Adobe Acrobat Reader tends to use a considerable amount of resources of your PC.
As an alternative to Acrobat Reader, there exist a number of other viewer and reader tools which can be used to read/ view PDF documents. You may try using a few such PDF readers mentioned below.
Foxit Reader
This PDF reader/viewer is extremely small in size, just 2.55MB. This free PDF reader offers a great collection of tools that enables you to view, read as well as print out your PDF documents. Apart from offering all features that are present in Adobe Acrobat Reader, it has ability to launch PDF documents at a breezing-fast speed.
Using its converter feature, you can convert a PDF file to its original form. The latest version, i.e. Foxit Reader 2.3, includes a new multimedia player feature using which you can enjoy audio/video elements present within the PDF file. You can get a free download of this multilingual PDF reader on Foxit Website.
Foxit Reader supports many Windows Operating Systems such as Windows Vista, Me, 2003, 2000 and XP.
Cool PDF Reader
Cool PDF Reader is unbelievably small, only 626KB and is known to be smallest PDF viewer/reader Worldwide. This “cool” and tiny application is extremely easy to install. The installation procedure is really short and simple. You just need to download the freeware file from the internet, unzip and run it.
This amazing reader can be used to view/read, print as well as convert the PDF files to other formats such as JPG, BMP, PNG, TXT, GIF, EPS, WMF and EMF. It works with all PDF file versions and supports 68 different languages. You can view a full screen slid show of the PDF document using Cool PDF Reader application.
PDFescape
This online PDF reader also serves as form filler, form designer and editor. You may read PDF documents as well as edit PDF forms online using PDFescape which is a free application. It allows you to add texts, graphics and links to PDF forms. Adding new form fields and styling them with the font, size and color of your choice is also possible.
Adobe Acrobat Reader charges $299 for this editing form feature. However, with PDFescape you can use it free of cost.
PDF Hammer
This is yet another online PDF application which is absolutely free-of-cost. PDF Hammer allows you to edit PDF files online. With the help of this application, you can reorder, rearrange pages as you wish or delete any pages if you don’t need them. You may also combine/ merge PDF files together.
PDF Hammer enables you to add/ edit/ update document metadata fields such as title, keywords, subject and author. You may also lock your PDF documents with the help of password-based security.
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PDF-XChange of course. I use it long time with great satisfaction.
Yes, PDF-XChange is great viewer! And LifeHacker.com says the same: http://lifehacker.com/5842130/the-best-pdf-viewereditor-for-windows – this pdf-viewer is the best.
You forgot PDF-XChange Viewer. It’s the one of the best Adobe alternative for years. It gets better and better. It offers more features for Free (I’m glad to use now support XFA pdf form files, add/edit Bookmark). The free version here does a lot and even the full-blown version is pretty cheap compared to the others. Their support for all user is excellent. Only with PDF-XChange I have so fast and complete help for my answers.