[colecampbell666]

I want a good, fast, free PDF reader for Windows. Adobe takes like 20 minutes to load.

[Dark RevenantX]

20 minutes?  Stop using Pentium 1.

[CP5670]

And stop using the Adobe reader as well. Check out Foxit. It has basically the same functionality with a tenth of the bloat.

[BloodEagle]

Check out CoolPDFReader

[castor]

Xpdf => ftp://ftp.foolabs.com/pub/xpdf/xpdf-3.02pl2-win32.zip
No idea whether the Win version is any good though.

[perihelion]

I second the recommendation for Foxit.  I've been continually frustrated by Adobe Acrobat Reader's refusal to save changes to .PDF's.  Like when you are in the process of filling out long forms, what possible reason other than greed is there for refusing to save the document?  I'm trying to apply for my professional engineering license, and the forms are all PDF, must be filled out electronically, and it is taking me weeks to get everything done in what little spare time I have.  Adobe won't save it.  You get a friendly little message saying you must purchase Adobe Acrobat Professional to save the filled out forms.

Screw that, and screw Adobe.  Foxit can do all Adobe Reader can and a good deal more, for free, and with a scant fraction of Adobe Reader's bloated footprint.

CutePDF is another handy utility.  It can create / print .PDF's, and as far as I can tell they are of equal quality to those produced by Adobe Acrobat.

Not that I have any serious hate going on for Adobe...

[Unknown Target]

I agree with Foxit Reader, it's great, light, and fast: http://www.foxitsoftware.com/pdf/rd_intro.php

[colecampbell666]

Foxit wants me to "Complete one offer".

[Jeff Vader]

eXPert PDF Reader, Sumatra PDF Reader. Those spring to my mind. I've tested eXPert myself and it's alright. Could be lighter, I suppose, but it sure is lighter than Adobe.

[Nuke]

i use foxit on the grounds that i dont want to download a huge ****ing file. foxit is only a couple meg download. on the other hand it does want you to buy the pro version, list like adobe. that is something i barely tolerate. so if theres a pdf reader out there that doesnt make you buy anything to have the full feature set, il gladly switch over.

that said, pdf sucks, theyre huge. loaded with the document equivalent of drm, and are generally a pain in the ass. if you want people to switch over to using full electronic documents, were gonna need a better (that means more open and more standard) format.

[Dark RevenantX]

Well, the professional purpose of .pdf would be damaged if the DRM-esque stuff was removed.  Pdf's let you see fonts that you don't have, after all...  There are many reasons for the actual file format being as it is, although some of the bulk certainly can be dropped.  Adobe reader, on the other hand, is a total piece of ****.

[Nuke]

i can see why you wouldnt want people to pirate your forms and put their own name on them. but when you consider that of pdfs are improperly created, sometimes just scans of actual forms and often they do not support a means for people to fill it in and save a copy with their information. when you treat it as a print and fill in form, it sorta violates the whole purpose behind the format.

[colecampbell666]

I'll try eXpert, see how it is.

[jr2]

Sumatra I have used a few times, it seems to work good...

[Stealth]

... there is NOTHING wrong with adobe reader.
just timed it, and i can open a 300KB PDF in under 2 seconds...

you all seem to have a complex against large companies/conglomerates. even if their products are rock-solid

[jr2]

Really??  Did you time how long it took Adobe to open up?!?  Usually it takes about 30 seconds to a minute.  It's frakking HUGE.  Unless you have it set to auto-open on system startup (is there an Adobe icon in your system tray?).

[IceFire]

Some of the older Adobe Reader versions were bad but Reader 8 runs fast on my old work computer and it is OLD

If it takes longer than 10 seconds there is a problem for sure.

[Jeff Vader]

... there is NOTHING wrong with adobe reader.
just timed it, and i can open a 300KB PDF in under 2 seconds...

you all seem to have a complex against large companies/conglomerates. even if their products are rock-solid

I've had more crashes with Adobe Reader than with any other PDF reader. In my book that's something that is wrong with Adobe.

Yes, opening a pdf file doesn't take that much time, regardless of the reader. It's the starting up of the reader that takes the most time, and in all cases Adobe 'wins' with 10-20 seconds, whereas all other readers start up in less than 10 seconds.

I wouldn't say that all of us have a complex against larger companies. It's just that in many cases a free product works at least as well as the commercial product, if not better. Yes, Adobe reader is free, but everything else pdf related from Adobe costs money. Adobe persistently says that making pdf files is only possible with their expensive pieces of crap, whereas CutePDF Writer does the same thing, but it's free and most likely uses less resources, than some bloated software. So there's really no need to worship big companies, especially since as a student I for example am not that willing to sacrifice the luxury of eating for some expensive computer software that doesn't even work properly.

Bottom line: There's nothing wrong with large companies if their products work. But usually free and especially open source products outperform (yes, outperform) the expensive ones easily. The only reason I still have Adobe reader on my rig is that eXPert wasn't able to handle active pdf files properly.