Which is a good, free PDF reader for Vista ultimate?

[Linkinfamous]

Adobe Reader 8. It's bloated but opens quickly and works.

It opens quickly, but that's about it. You can't even compare a pretty basic thing like scrolling quickly through a document in Foxit and Adobe Reader (Actually, I take that back. You can compare them, and Adobe Reader loses, miserably.)

[Skyfrog]

I was using Adobe 8, I mistakenly thought they had actually made a good version at last. That is until something started sucking down 99% of my CPU resources and it turned out to be the stupid Adobe Updater stuck in a loop. Also the amount of stuff Adobe installs on your drive and registry just for a pdf reader is insane. I've been using Foxit since then; so much better.

[bradavon]

I use Acrobat Reader, personally. It can be slow, but you can disable some of the plug-ins to make it faster.

http://software.bootblock.co.uk/?id=adobereaderspeedup

Thanks. I've just run this and Adobe Reader 8 now opens much quicker. If I had to say it opens now quicker than Foxit Reader.

I've also given Foxit Reader a go and it's pretty good and like you guys say it's a tiny program. I also see it scrolls better than Adobe Reader 8. I've set it as my default PDF reader and will test it over the next few days before ditching Adobe Reader.

It loses marks for having to run it as Admin to configure it and set it as Default though, but you only need to run it once in Admin Mode.

What do you get by paying for it? I never would but am just wondering.

Thanks guys.

[br0adband]

Sumatra PDF for the win. Single .exe (like Foxit) but even faster most of the time. Tiny, portable, and damned fast. Did I mention it was fast? :)

[gigapixels Veteran]

Foxit for sure (Y)

[JohnMarsten]

yeah I have to agree with the majority here, Foxit is great!

[Narlzac85]

I stick to adobe on windows, mostly because I've experienced quirks with foxit in the past (I couldn't understand some physics formulas once, then opened in adobe and it was entirely different). Probably not an issue now, but adobe reader isn't terrible, so I don't feel compelled to change it.

[bradavon]

Yuck Sumatra PDF Reader is basic:

http://blog.kowalczyk.info/software/sumatr...hot-01-full.gif

Agreed Adobe Reader is bloated but you don't need to go that far. Foxit is also speedy but at least looks professional.

[Mark7620]

I prefer Foxit. It is quite small and fast.

[random_n]

I much prefer Foxit over Adobe Reader, but Adobe Reader has a wonderful preview filter that works in Outlook 2007. Not having to open another program just to read a short PDF is great (if you've not used Outlook 2007 yet; it's basically tabbed browsing for your attachments), and if Foxit added that feature, I'd be back in a heartbeat.

I'm in the Adobe Reader 9 beta program, though, so I'll see how that goes. Reader 8 was a serious improvement over 6 and 7, so hopefully they "get it" now and will continue the trend. :)

[devHead]

Is it that bad to restart your PC? Its not like there is an update everyday.

Maybe not every day, but frequent enough to be annoying. What I would like to know is, why does a stupid PDF viewer program with a .01 update need to reboot your computer when it's done? That just seems kind of wonky to me.

[Marcel T]

Yuck Sumatra PDF Reader is basic:

Sumatra PDF viewer isn't basic, it does everything a PDF reader needs to (view options, zoom settings, rotatation and text search and selection) at a "no need to install" filesize of 1.1 MB. I bet most Adobe Reader updates are about as big as that, eugh. And if it's missing some kind of bloat you can't live without, the source is freely available to have your way with.

[Premgenius]

Adobe Reader

[Grope for Luna]

I used to like Adobe, but it's just too slow (you can turn off Autoupdate or just delete the updater files). Foxit is my regular viewer now but PDFXchange Viewer is also pretty good.

http://www.docu-track.com/downloads/users/

[Guest]

Foxit Reader

[MightyJordan]

I used to use Foxit PDF Reader, but I read a load of gamerzines that use Flash animations and videos, and Foxit doesn't support this, so I went back to Adobe Reader. It's gotten quicker. It's only slow opening the first pdf from bootup. After that, it's fast throughout. It's pretty big in size compared to Foxit, though. Foxit only takes up a few MBs, Adobe takes up about 80MB (AFAIK).

[WastedJoker]

I like Adobe Reader. It runs fast enough and I like it's plugins.

I can't understand people using a less-functional version and blame file size. Hard drive space is cheap as chips.

[SMELTN]

(Y) for Foxit Reader. Been using it for quite a while now, with no problems. I use it for work everyday, consider ALOT of our documents are faxinations and such, which come as .pdf's