Best Free PDF Reader

by Mike 11 August 2008 17 Comments

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Welcome back to the Freeware Mission, the freeware only PC is not just a dream anymore! I’ve started this quest almost a month ago and until then I had only freeware programs installed in my PC, except Windows XP. And everything went great! Now about the PDF readers, Adobe Reader is free to use too, but I think it’s way too slow and greedy with system resources. I need a fast and light freeware PDF reader!

I have tested several so-called freeware PDF readers and too many of them had annoying limitations inviting you to buy a “pro” version. The best option I discovered is PDF-XChange Viewer, free but with enough options to make a very good program.

PDF XChange+Viewer+1 Best Free PDF Reader

PDF XChange+Viewer+2 Best Free PDF Reader

PDF-XChange Viewer is a lot faster than the Adobe Reader and has also some nice conversion features. You can convert your PDF files into various file formats including BMP, JPG, PNG and TIFF. You can also extract the text from a PDF file and integrate PDF-XChange Viewer with Internet Explorer or Mozilla Firefox.

You can download PDF-XChange Viewer from here, it’s free!

My Evaluation	9
Operating System	Windows All
Size	15.7 MB
Author	Tracker Software
Version Tested	2.0

The Freeware Mission will continue! In the next episode I’ll pick the best free PDF writer, don’t miss it!

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17 Comments »

Anonymous said:

Never heard of Foxit Reader ??

# 7 September 2008 at 7:37 am

Anonymous said:

That seems inconsistent with your argument against Adobe Reader’s heavy weight. Foxit is a lot lighter than PDF X-Change.

# 8 September 2008 at 10:54 am

Johnny Karp said:

I’m not sure about that, PDF X-Change loaded a lot faster, opened the documents a lot faster…

# 8 September 2008 at 11:36 am

maximillian_x said:

What anonymous meant is Foxit has a 15Mb memory footprint while PDFXchange has a 25Mb footprint while viewing the same file (for example).

Also, I noticed the install was quite a bit larger than Foxit.

When looking at PDF-Xchange, I noticed a bunch of annotation and drawing tools that are included, which would explain the larger size. I’m wondering if the viewer software is the same as the editor (once the eval is over, it switches to only viewer)?

# 29 September 2008 at 12:10 pm

Johnny Karp said:

@Maximilian_X
I don’t think there is an evaluation period. I’ve been using it for about two months and all the options are still there.

# 29 September 2008 at 11:20 pm

Jonno said:

I was wondering about Foxit. I deeeeeefinitely don’t ever use Adobe, and I switched to Foxit. But I have to say, Foxit is not near as light as I thought it would be.

But you seriously recommend this…. PDF X-Change over Foxit, and Sumatra? Maybe I’ll have to give it a try.

# 2 October 2008 at 10:55 pm

Koch1882 said:

And, as of December 2008, the new Foxit 3.0 now comes with adware that must be installed – a toolbar and an eBay icon. Foxit 3.0 is in effect no longer free and no different than Adobe bloatware. I just switched to PDF X-Change and love it. a 25mb vs. 15mb memory footprint is trivial, and yes it loads faster than Foxit.

# 1 January 2009 at 11:54 pm

Johnny Karp said:

@Koch1882
That’s sad news about Foxit. I liked PDF X-change better anyway

# 2 January 2009 at 12:01 am

krisvek said:

That is also incorrect news about Foxit. The toolbar, etc., are in no way required. Just like many other free programs, you simply have to opt out of those ‘features’ during the installation. You DO pay attention to the installation routine, don’t you, Koch1882?

I hadn’t heard of PDF X-change, so I’ll definitely give it a shot. How does Sumatra stack up?

# 23 January 2009 at 2:28 am

Johnny Karp said:

@krisvek
Please come back and tell us how it went with PDF X-change. I’m satisfied with it so far.

# 23 January 2009 at 12:19 pm

Bilgisayarınız İçin 72 Ücretsiz Yazılım | catlakses.com said:

[...] PDF XChange Viewer – Very good PDF reader, a lot faster than Adobe Reader. And there?s even more: you can convert your PDF files to various file formats, including BMP, JPG, PNG or TIFF. It can be integrated with Firefox or Internet Explorer. [...]

# 23 January 2009 at 10:09 pm

Evan said:

How about Foxit Reader? You might give a try =)

# 4 February 2009 at 6:03 pm

Rachel said:

I used Foxit for a while and I thought it was great. Then I had to print a PDF out. What a nightmare. I waited for 20 minutes and nothing printed. Other users had the same problem. Some users reported they had to wait hours for a file to spool. 10-20 minutes seemed to be the norm. Yikes. I was not going to wait that long. I had the latest version so I tried uninstalling and using some older versions and that didn’t work.

I finally switched to PDF-XChange and I love it. My PDFs print out instantly and it’s a great program overall. I’m not sure if Foxit has fixed this problem, but I feel no need to go back and find out.

# 30 March 2009 at 4:06 pm

Johnny Karp said:

@Rachel
Thanks for sharing your thoughts.

# 4 April 2009 at 9:11 pm

MortalHuman said:

Hey Johnny, great post there with the list of apps, I snagged Digsby and will install it later along with a few more goodies here.

Have you heard of Sumatra PDF Reader? That thing is like 250kb and renders fast, is free, and does not require an install.

After switching to 64 bit XP (which I enjoy a lot, by the way), I’m left needing to install my apps again, and I’m looking for alternatives. I’m not sure if I’ll get Foxit or go back to Sumatra for my PDF needs, though. Actually, odds are I’ll just use the Open Office PDF import plugin and just read in office

Of course, I don’t get auto opening of PDF files from browsers that way, so I might pick one of the two stand alones in my comment.

Nice blog, will read some more!

# 28 October 2009 at 2:13 pm

Dion said:

I just wanted to thank you for putting me onto PDF-Xchange. It is so much lighter than adobe and does everything I need.

# 4 February 2010 at 4:41 am

Tech Guru said:

Here is free PDF tool which I would like to share that is Free PDF cube.

This tool is much faster, better and has lot of functions. Also this free for life

You can try the same from pdfcube.com

The Direct Download link for FREE PDF is

http://pdfcube.com/download/pdf-cube-free.zip

It is 100% FREE PDF Converter and works as a virtual printer. you can convert more than 300 + formats so now you can convert all your Word, Excel, Powerpoint to PDF Free.

# 16 August 2010 at 9:06 pm