What happened to Acrobat Reader? Is there an alternative?

By pandu

There was a time when Acrobat Reader was easy to use, quick to load and never crashed. Unfortunately, these days Adobe’s Acrobat reader is a pain. I use Acrobat 7.0 and the latest version has a download file of 22MB! Only 4 years ago, the Acrobat Reader download file was less than 2MB. Its sad to see such a great program become so bulky, slow and buggy.

There are several reasons for this, but the main reason is that Adobe is trying to make the Acrobat products do everything. While Acrobat products started out as a reader, it is now capable (poorly) of doing spreadsheet magic, automated field creation, collaboration, version controlling, etc. I am sure there are people who use these features. But the vast majority use it to download an online bank statement or the occasional documentation. Its too bad that they are losing the majority of users in order to satisfy a niche group.

One alternative that works very well is the Foxit Reader! Its download file is only 2.1 MB, installs quickly and it loads lightning fast – all qualities that earlier versions of Acrobat Reader used to have. You will need to uninstall Acrobat Reader and restart your computer. The first time you try to open a PDF document, your system will not know how to open it. But after you select Foxit Reader as your PDF reader everything works well. You can download it here.

Foxit Reader is made by a small software company called Foxit in Sunnyvale, California and judging by their website’s “About Us” section, these folks really care about making good software. You can also buy a PDF Writer for only $35.00 compared to Adobe’s several hundred dollars for Adobe Professional. This is a great example of a market opportunity created by companies that ruin once good products.