[mysterio]

PDFs look neat and all, but I avoid them whenever possible. SLOW. Amazing to me that Adobe hasn’t addressed this problem.

[gondramB]

I still hate it when I click on a PDF by accident.

But it is much better since I started using Foxit PDF reader

This is the review from my favorite download site - snapfiles.com

>>Foxit PDF Reader
PDF reader

Our Rating: 4.5 stars (Very Good!)

Foxit PDF Reader is an alternative to Adobe Reader, that allows you to view and print PDF files. Unlike Adobe Reader, it opens PDF files very fast, without any delay. It supports all the standard features, as well as browser integration, and also an option select/copy of text from the documents. Furthermore, you can create a snapshot from a selected portion of the page, fill interactive forms and more.

Pros: Much faster than Adobe Reader

Cons: No thumbnail browsing; does not include all Adobe features; some Pro features included for evaluation
<<

http://www.snapfiles.com/reviews/Foxit_PDF_Reader/foxitpdf.html

[evets]

My adobe is made of dung.

[Thunder Pig]

I HATE PDF links...especially if I have 8 or 9 or more tabs open. More often than not it'll crash my machine, and I have to reboot. It really makes me mad if I'm recording radio over the web or editing video. I think people should mark those links clearly, so we can just right click and download to look at later.

[Thunder Pig]

Oh, and thanks for the link to Fox-it. I’ll give it a try!

[papasmurf]

Everything after 5.x sucks.

If you have Linux, you don’t need Adobe, or any extra software, PDF rendering and creating is included in the distro.

[pillut48]

Wow, I always thought it was just my computer that takes forever to load pdf files!!! I also have similar slow-down problems after closing the files and exiting...good to know it’s not just me.

[JenB]

Acrobat Reader took over my laptop. No joking, it made some registry change and decided it was going to open all “.exe” and “.dll” files - that means basically every program on my pc. And I couldn’t manage to undo it or get into the registry to change it since the regedit program used those files too!

I managed to get IE open and use it as Windows Explorer to get to where the files for Reader were and delete them. I hate and despise Acrobat Reader and will use Foxit wherever possible. Reader is a huge resource hog.

[mnehring]

I'm not crazy about Foxit. Yea, it is a small file and probably OK if you just occasionally read .pdf files, but it does print Foxit ads whenever you print a .pdf file from it. It also doesn't render all graphics in the original form, it seems to compress too much. Some of the complaints I've read on this said the display copy looks like an old fax.

[DainBramage]

Do you have a reader for msblast files. Everytime I open one my computer slows down too.

[The_Reader_David]

Here’s a mystery: Adobe developed the pdf format, but their rendering program is the worst.

I don’t know if you have an alternative with Window, but the Apple Preview that comes bundled with OS X, and the standare Linux pdf renderer, ghostview, both load and render pdf fast. If you’re not on a Windows machine, you can certainly change you default pdf helper program to something besides Acrobat Reader. If you are, maybe there’s an alternative, too, or maybe you can disable the feature that loads pdf links in the browser, so that clicking on a pdf link give you a download window instead.

[ShadowAce]

Hmm. I've not run into this. Oh wait--I don't use Adobe. I use evince.

Sorry.

[ShadowAce]

[martin_fierro]

Someone once suggested to me that when talking to someone from Adobe, pronounce the name “adoBEY”. It irks them no end.

[shorty_harris]

On my MS windows machines, I use Sumatra PDF Reader. Smaller and faster than Foxit.

[FourtySeven]

I hate to be a spoiler here, but I have no problems with Adobe Reader. Of course, I just bought my computer last year (iMac with 2.4 GHz 2 GB SDRAM). It’s a dual processor machine so maybe Adobe only works well with dual processors.

Not that you’d want to change now, but the problem you described sounded like a problem caused by the Adobe auto updater. If you turned the auto update feature off I suspect the performance would improve dramatically.

[Xenalyte]

Try upgrading your Acrobat reader.

[webschooner]

bookmark

[Straight Vermonter]

Firefox also has an Ad-blocker extension that makes surfing much faster.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1865

[KoRn]

I also use ‘Foxit’, and it is FAAAAAR better than Adobe Acrobat. Foxit very fast, files open almost instantly, only takes a few seconds to install and doesn’t setup a bunch of unnecessary services that run on startup that you have installed with Adobe Acrobat which easily slows down marginally performing computers. I believe that Foxit also has a “professional” version that allows one to edit and save PDF files, and it’s much less expensive than Adobe’s PDF Writer application.

I hate it when you have what used to be good, well designed, simple running applications that over time devolve into bloatware. Norton Antivirus is probably among the worst in this regard..

On an unrelated note, I’m a little worried now that Adobe has apparently taken over Flash player. Flash player used to install quickly and function well on most systems. Now that Adobe has it, I wonder how long it will take before Flash player will require nearly 10 minutes to install, slow down older computers, and cause .SWF files/web pages to take an eternity to open.