Acrobat Reader could shed a few pounds

When you’re the standard, it is common to become comfortable, the popularity of your product trumping the need to introduce changes that are more than negligible. However, popularity is often the result of the familiarity of your product taking priority over its reliability. In every industry, consumers exhibit their tendency to remain with the standard out of habit, ignoring blatant flaws that become allowable in the face of the unknown.

One such example is Acrobat Reader by Adobe, the de facto application used to read .PDF files. PDF ( Portable Document Format ) is the file format created by Adobe Systems for the exchange of documents. Independent of the common variables that are attendant to the compatibility of a file format ( software, hardware, and operating system ), PDF files are self-contained documents of a two-dimensional nature. Until just recently, Acrobat Reader – also created by Adobe Systems – was the the sole application that one could use to view a PDF file. Slightly over a year ago, Adobe released the format as an open format, giving the chance to read the file with alternative solutions.

Acrobat Reader, like all favored applications that have the already mentioned complacency, has seen its evolution stunted by a dearth of attention given to performance. Though basically used for just viewing files, its bloat is obvious, the application consuming approximately 30MB of space. While Acrobat Reader has features that haven’t yet been adopted by competing software, there are a number of alternatives that offer its core functionality without the surplus baggage.

One choice is Evince. Evince is prominent for its simplicity, its name accompanied by a tagline that reads, “Simply a document viewer.” That is precisely what Evince is, its unassuming interface underscored by the speed that you’d naturally associate with what is nothing more than a document viewer. A neat addition to Evince is its “Presentation Mode,” which handles a PDF as if it is a slideshow. In this mode, each page is treated as a slide. Originally written for use with Linux, there’s a Windows version that offers the same features.

Another great alternative is SumatraPDF. For those that simply wish to view and print PDF files, SumatraPDF does so without any of the lag one notices when using Acrobat Reader. While plain in appearance, not unlike Evince, its functionality is simple to glean from the easily navigable interface. With few buttons, you can take advantage of this specific tool for the functions that are most used by those viewing a PDF : open, page-jump, search. Though its functionality is limited to just the core jobs we associate with Acrobat Reader, it moves at an impressive speed, with a minimalistic design that spares you the needless trimmings.

Lastly, there’s Foxit Reader, an alternative that offers comparable features without the excesses of Acrobat Reader. Free and available for Windows, Foxit Reader is regarded by many to be the most gratifying choice for those who have sought a usable substitute for Acrobat Reader. One reason for its popularity is the impressive feature set : email the PDF while viewing it, highlight part of the screen and save it as an image, and convert the PDF to text. Those features come with the free version, without any mention of what’s included should you purchase the Foxit Reader Pro Pack. The main feature of the Pro Pack is the facility to edit your PDF files.

In the case of Acrobat Reader, this is but one of many instances where you will find that the most well liked software isn’t always the most practical answer. Acrobat Reader is definitely no slouch, coming from the company that created the PDF format, but there’s no way to deny that it can stand to shed lots of the weight that slows the current version down. Until that is done, the choices mentioned above should be more than enough to fulfill your wants where viewing PDF files are concerned.

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