The term “PDF” stands for “Portable Document Format”. The key word is portable. Properly made, PDF files are not subject to the vagaries of other formats. A PDF file can be a precise snapshot, created at a specific date and time, and in a specific way. You can trust a PDF like you can trust a fax, it will look the same on the recipient’s computer as it does on yours. You can’t say that about a Word file! (http://www.planetpdf.com/)

The best known PDF Reader is Adobe Reader. Adobe Systems are the company who invented PDF, and they provide Adobe Reader as a free download. You may already have it installed as it is sometimes included with other programs.

However, Adobe Reader is now a large download and takes up a lot of disk space once installed. It also installs a “launcher” program that runs every time you switch on your computer, making Adobe Reader load faster when you use it, but at the cost of always having part of that program loaded into your computer memory (making less memory available to your other programs, and so marginally affecting the performance of your computer).

But there are many free alternatives. The two I use the most are:

  1. Foxit Reader
  2. PDF-XChange Viewer

These are both provided by commercial companies, who also offer “Pro” versions of the programs with additional features.

Foxit Reader is the smaller (approx 2mb download) and quicker of the two, and for simple reading of individual PDF files is probably the best to use.

PDF-XChange Viewer has more features, such as allowing you to load more than one PDF document into a tabbed window, but it is a slightly larger program (14mb download at the time of writing) and is a little slower to start up.

You can use both programs to annotate PDF documents, although with Foxit Reader the resulting copy PDF document that you create is stamped/watermarked with “Evaluation Version” or something similar.
At the moment PDF-XChange Viewer doesn’t have this limitation, although it does include other “Pro” features that require a require a Pro license, or create a watermark in the document.

All of the above programs are available on the 8daysaweek CD for Windows® along with other PDF tools.