News and Reviews > Mini-Reviews by Members

Quality Comparison: 8 x freeware PDF Readers / Viewers

<< < (6/22) > >>

KenR:
Just out of curiosity, are any of these programs better than Acrobat? I have Acrobat v7 Standard, which I got with a scanner. Is there any reason I would WANT to use anything else to work with my PDF files?

Thanks, Ken

J-Mac:
I like PDF-Xchange, but I have noticed that its cpu and memory usage while scrolling is much, much higher than Foxit's (100MB+ vs 25MB ...)
-elpresi (June 22, 2007, 04:16 PM)
--- End quote ---
The Pro application?  Or are you talking about the reader?

Either way, I didn't like Fox-It the few times I tried it. It did some things nice, but now and then it would render kinda weird. Also, it would print OK, then out of the blue it would print something way off. I have a feeling it depends on what Acrobat version it was converted with, something like that.

Thanks.

elpresi:
The reader  ;)

J-Mac:
The reader  ;)
-elpresi (June 22, 2007, 06:13 PM)
--- End quote ---
Thanks. I figured that; after all Foxit only has a reader I think.

I know the thread is about readers.  I was just hoping to avoid creating another thread by asking about that in this one, but I don't think many folks will see it here.  ;)

Thanks again!

J-Mac:
Just out of curiosity, are any of these programs better than Acrobat? I have Acrobat v7 Standard, which I got with a scanner. Is there any reason I would WANT to use anything else to work with my PDF files?

Thanks, Ken
-KenR (June 22, 2007, 05:06 PM)
--- End quote ---
Ken,

Scansoft's PDF Converter Pro (Current version is 4, though I have version 3) is very good working with PDF files, when it works.  But it is pretty buggy IMO. Actually quite a few users are having similar experiences; look at user reviews for it at Amazon, Newegg, C-Net, etc. and you'll see an unusually high number of users seeing it terminate suddenly and unexpectedly. However when it works, it works very well.  At least for what I need from it.

My main reason for purchasing PDF Converter Pro is to edit and/or type directly into existing PDF documents: I am pretty much housebound, and I am required to complete PDF forms for my insurance company, as well as my prescription mail-in insurer.  They have the PDFs on their sites for download and I am expected to print them and handwrite on them. But they don't have enough space for handwritten input. With PDF Converter Pro I can type right into the documents, and then print and mail them. I also save them for minimal input on subsequent forms. Works well for that.  However in almost every instance when I try to open a form from the File menu or toolbar icon. the program crashes. I have found that if I set this app as the default handler for PDFs and then double-click on files that are not in deeply nested folders they open fine.

I also use PDF Converter Pro for the following: converting PDF files to MS Word documents; consolidate several different PDF files into one file; similarly, I also extract pages from PDF files, or break larger files into several smaller files.

It has a nice feature set, but crashes often. And Nuance doesn't offer any support for it, neither free nor paid, which is pretty sad.

I initially had wanted to purchase Acrobat, but their most inexpensive license a couple of years ago was over $300!  As I only use it sparingly at home -- compared to business users -- I thought that they might offer a reduced price version for home/personal users. I wrote Adobe and asked about that, but the tech who replied said that they only offer the pricing models on their site. $300 is too much for me to pay for occasional home use only, so I sought less expensive alternatives.

Navigation

[0] Message Index

[#] Next page

[*] Previous page