Foxit Reader alternative to Adobe Reader
If you are like me and you are tired of the bloat and terrible performance of Adobe Reader, there is a really powerful alternative to Adobe Reader called Foxit Reader. The install is lightweight (14 mb zip) compared to the now humongous Adobe Reader install compared to what it used to be.
In working with a client that was having problems searching and printing a 2900 page PDF document (yes that is no mistype, 2900 page PDF), they were having tremendous performnace problems using Adobe Reader. In fact Adobe became relatively unusable when scrolling and searching through that number of pages. Printing fared no better with Adobe. After a certain number of pages, Windows thinks that the print job has bitten the dust as it takes so long.
After installing and using Foxit reader, the performance is hands down way better than Adobe. Scrolling, searching, and printing took much less time and the responsiveness of the program was superior to Adobe on the same document.
My only negative comment to make so far in using the program is that by default it attempts to install the ASK toolbar. In my eyes, it devalues a piece of software when by default they attempt to install additional software packages that you do not want or need. Of course the system administrator side of me hates toolbars to begin with as they cause so many end user issues, performance problems, and malware concerns.
Other than the above mentioned issue with the toolbar install, Foxit Reader is definitely a piece of software you may want to load if you are dealing with performance issues with Adobe, especially in dealing with huge PDF files.