Best Free Non-Adobe PDF Reader

Hey,

mr. moderator, i think you should also consider language support by pdf readers. some of these pdfs read european languages well, but most of them cannot open asian language documents. foxit, for example, cannot open a pdf document files of chinese character names. you'll have to change it to english alphabet to do so. (i am using the latest version of foxit, still the same problem straight from the developers).

well done people. good job mr. moderator.

cheers y'all.

SupportAlert used to recommend the free eXPert PDF Reader by Visagesoft
www.visagesoft.com/products/pdfreader

Why is it no longer on th list? I find it very good and with a much smaller memory footprint than Foxit.

What about STDU Viewer?
STDU Viewer is a document viewer for multiple file formats.

http://www.stdutility.com/stduviewer.html

TXT, TIFF, PDF, DjVu, CBR, CBZ, XPS

I think Foxit also has its official portable version.
Why is it not mentioned here?

I recently downloaded PDF xchange viewer to my laptop, and I just love it. It was quite a breath of fresh air after adobe 8 and the best thing is I can read a document just after I click on it to open. Adobe really slowed down my computer and gave me stomach ulcers.

However I need to get printouts of the docs on my laptop and the computer at my work place has only adobe reader. It does not open the files saved using PDF XChange. (I get an error message) I need to do this since I am using my work place computer to get my printouts. This is really frustrating and I am wondering whether to go back to Adobe reader on my laptop. I tried the PDF Xchange site and nothing turns up on the search. SOMEBODY PLEASE HELP ME, since Adobe has found a way to screw me and give me stomach ulcers again!

I've found Foxit to be extremely slow to print.

After trying Cool PDF and Sumatra PDF and finding that both failed to open many files, I then downloaded Foxit Reader and found that it opened everyhting, and that it is FAR superior to Adobe Reader, even though Foxit is only 12 MB to Adobe's 26 MB.

I tried Cool PDF just now and there some pdf files it won't open. Not so cool after all.

After trying all the recommended PDF readers I found PDF-XChange Viewer to be superior. It can open many PDF's that can't be opened by Foxit or Adobe readers. Moreover the clarity in rendering is superior. And finally you have so many features.

Does anyone know the solution to this PDF-XChange Viewer problem?

I can't open files with PDF-XChange Viewer from a browser--neither in Firefox nor in IE.

PDF-XChange Viewer opens the files perfeclty from my HD (when the website lets me save them directly), but the browser plugins seem to fail: in Firefox, all I get is a window that's blank except for a PDFXVwer logo; in IE, I get a window that seems to be counting up the file's size and then ends with the spurious message "Document is broken".

When I installed PDF-XChange Viewer, I chose a full install including the addins for both browsers, and both browsers show the PDF-XChange Viewer plugin to be enabled. I also have PDF-XChange Viewer as the default program for PDF files. I re-installed PDF-XChange Viewer, but the problem persists. I'm using a fully up-to-date Windows XP Home.

Thanks,
-Rich

Thanks for the work here, this is a great resource.

One suggestion: it might be interesting to collect and make available a few "benchmark" pdf files that will flush out compatibility & performance issues.

It would help differentiate some of the small, fast, low-feature variety to know that "viewer A read all the reference PDFs without problem" or "viewer B choked on reference #2", etc.

Personally, I used to be a big fan of Foxit, but now with the new automatic update features I'm less than thrilled (yeah, I know it can be turned off, but it starts to remind me of when I stopped liking Acrobat reader).

I'm trying PDF-XChange at your suggestion and so far it looks great.

I cannot figure out why none of them have decent bookmarking capability. I just want to be able to open a pdf, read however long, and bookmark where I leave off. I know you can sort of do it with foxit comments, comment a page then search for comments... but that's a clumsy way to do it. I want a bookmarks menu like in any other e-book reader, browser, etc.

Evince is a light weight but good free pdf reader.

Tried out PDF-XChange Viewer and Cool PDF Reader and have gone back to Adobe Reader (v5, a version from a few years back - the newer versions of it, esp 7+ are particularly bloaty).

PDF-XChange was significantly slower than Adobe Reader 5 and the download included an unexplained other .exe

Cool PDF Reader seemed horrible. Incredibly slow to open, sometimes didn't even visibly open, but was just there hogging 99% of resources as revealed by the Windows Task Manager Processers viewer (Ctrl-Alt-Del). Was installed after PDF-XChange so who knows if one was affecting the other.

Did not even try Foxit Reader Free as it was not clear from their page if this was available. There was something written on the download page about needing to email them in order to get browser-adware-free version. Well, that ain't happening.

Conclusion: yuk, yuk and yuk

Review doesn't say how well (or if at all) the products work in the major browsers. For me, a major need for reading PDFs is when I encounter them on the Web.

Hi There - Cool PDF Reader is a wee ripper but I too had problems with one PDF file....kept getting error messages when trying open it. I sent off an email to developers (with that PDF file attached) and they responded promptly that the file in question contained elements which were not yet supported by Cool PDF. They assured me this issue would be fixed in the next release.

In the meantime I am using Sumatra and am very happy with that viewer. As you say, if just opening and viewing PDF files is the only concern then these smaller apps are terrific.

Thanks for your efforts,
JIM

Thanks for sharing. PDF-XChange Viewer is pretty helpful since it allows users add annotation on PDF files. However, Sometimes I need to edit pdf files content, with Adreamsoft PDF to Word Converter, I can easily edit my pdf files in word. It supports convert restricted pdf files and the conversion quality impresses me deeply. Hope you like it too.

[Moderated: Links to the commercial site removed.]

I think the review should also compare the memory usage of each application during normal use. For example, Sumatra is a very small application, but can potentially use a lot of memory after scrolling down a good number of pages.

I guess a free PDF Reader from CAD-KAS (http://www.cadkas.com/downengpdf5.php) hasn't been mentioned yet.

lloonn

Moderators comment:
You cannot save files with the free version

I'm not sure what is causing problems for you guys. All the links work fine for me.

EDIT.

Okay. I figured out what was wrong. The "download" and "homepage" buttons next to the links were incorrect. Not to worry! I fixed it.

Please some one correct the download links for PDF-XChange and Foxit,which are transposed,this error has been there for some time.

Thanks a lot for the suggestions! I am currently testing all of the PDF viewers suggested and possibly adding a few of the products to the list.

Hey guys! I would like to bring up two free pdf readers/printers:

- Haihaisoft PDF reader
http://www.haihaisoft.com/PDF_Reader_download.aspx
It's light-weight PDF reader/writer with a small size (1.7MB), capable of loading pdf documents in a fast way, read protected pdf document, and so on. Moreover, Haihaisoft is a Chinese DRM software developer, so this pdf reader/writer supports simplified Chinese/traditional Chinese.

- Brava! Reader
http://www.bravaviewer.com/reader.htm
- Free Software to View and Print
PDF, TIFF and CSF
- Brava! Reader is a free* application that views and prints TIFF, PDF, XPS and secure CSF (Content Sealed Format) files created by other Brava products or the Net-It® publishing products. Brava Reader is simple to use and runs as a desktop program or as an ActiveX component in a web page.
Key Features:
Easy to use
Search/Find
Supports TIFF, PDF, XPS and secure CSF
Thumbnails
Documents to oversized CAD drawings
View layers and attributes, measure and print to scale (CSF)

why not give them a try?

Sumatra Pdf 0.9.4 is out, with some good changes, and bug fixes.

Anupam Shriwatri

Hi guys, I need to convert a PDF document into jpg or gif format. Pls tell me how to go about it.

Sorry, cannot recommend Foxit. When my mother visits, she brings her marketing work with her, and on the few occasions she used my computer instead of her laptop, the PDFs she needed to read were not at all compatible with Foxit's features, and important data was missing. Not good when she's a consultant who has to make decisions on the road based on the PDFs her contacts are sending her. I've found for my own use that it does strange things with PDFs containing bookmarks, full page graphics, or forms, and tends to crash a lot. Faster than Adobe, yes, but also unstable and does not support all the features that Adobe Reader does.

I spend a lot of time on Facebook, also on the application "Farm Town" lol lately when I am on it a message comes up saying that the flash player has encountered a problem and needs to close and it then shuts down the program. I currently have the latest edition available of the Adobe Flash Player. Could someone tell me why this is happening and possibly offer a solution of some sort. As I am not up on the technical side of things it needs to be easy to follow, for example I dont even know what roll the flash player plays lol. Wld welcome any advice. Thankyou