I like both Foxit Reader and PDF Xchange Viewer, I have use both off and on for several years. PDF Xchange appears to load faster but then an issue with Firefox started happening where PDF Xchange's add-on was causing Firefox to load slow and it wouldn't read documents within Firefox. The problem got worse with PDF Xchange updates and Firefox upgrades to the point that Firefox would use 100% CPU for several minutes and sometimes had to be killed with Task Manager because it wouldn't load at all. It took me awhile to find the add-on causing the problem, once PDF Xchange's add-on was removed, Firefox started loading correctly. I experienced a similar issue on my other system where Firefox was also running slow. I really don't think the add-on is completely compatible with the latest version of Firefox because this system didn't have any other add-ons except the default ones that came with Firefox. I never had any problems with Foxit Reader, because I choose to stay with it. Thanks.
Tracker Software has published an impressive 202-page user manual for their PDF-XChange Viewer this week. You can find it on their Downloads page (PDFVManual.zip): http://www.tracker-software.com/product/downloads
FoxIt has gotten much better and I use it in portable form. In my browser (Chrome), I use Docs PDF/PowerPoint Viewer (by Google). I tried gPDF but it was inconsistent and didn't always work (I used to use it in FireFox). One thing you should do is compare your reader side-by-side with Acrobat. Many of them do a poor job with rendering quality. If quality output counts, whether on screen or on paper, I use Acrobat.
That is very good advice I've found that PDF-XChange Viewer comes second to Adobe in a side-by-side comparison. But why is Acrobat's rendering quality still better than its competitors? In other words, what does Adobe do or know that the others don't?
Adobe Reader does it's job, although I don't really like all the security vulnerabilities found from it all the time. I've never tried using any other PDF software however.
Adobe is pants, I haven't even got it on my desk top. Is the Foxit reader freeware like pants Adobe reader (ie NOT trialware or anything)? And can it run on 64 bit Win 7?
I've downloaded Foxit & uninstalled Adobe reader on my laptop. Good riddance I say. Foxit is quick & light. It looks like a vast improvement. Adobe was always trouble, of some sort or another.
I have had a few problems on my laptop (Vista HP) with Foxit. It is OK in IE but seems to have some problems with opening in tabs in SeaMonkey (beta) & Firefox (beta). It seems to be working beautifully on my Win 7 desktop PC though (even in the SeaMonkey beta). So I have downloaded PDF-XChange Viewer for my laptop. It seems to be working fine. Both Foxit & PDF-XChange Viewer are far better than Adobe the arse-PDF viewer IMHO! LOL It's nice to have a choice!
Sumatra PDF fits the bill for me 95% of the times simply because all I'm using a PDF reader for is to view/read them...nothing much apart from that. I still haven't found the need for that balance of 5% though and I'm still looking although that's not on my priority list for now. I've had some fun with Foxit (when it didn't include Ask toolbar) and PDF-XChange Viewer and I'd say I prefer the latter if I remember correctly. Nitro wasn't bad either the last time I tried it (early release) but resource usage wasn't pleasant to my eyes...no ideas how it is today. Adobe Reader? Yup...it's the best in terms of it's display clarity when I had it but for what it's worth (for my personal usage), I chose to let go of it. I found it to be too much of a bloat for my liking in terms of the space it took up on my system and how slow it load PDF files which have too many pages. (that's my experience but may differ from person-to-person) Nothing to do with security issues since I applaud them for their continuous updates (sometimes too many it can become rather annoying I find) and the now "sandbox" feature which makes use of the built-in security features of Windows Vista/7 if I'm not wrong.
I've recently put PDF X-Change on my desktop & it has been on both laptops for a while. The laptops running Vista had some problems with Foxit but are fine with X-Change. After some odd inconsistencies with upgrading & Foxit on my desktop (Win 7 64bit) I have changed to PDF X-Change. I think I prefer the overall look & 'feel' of it anyway.
Oh ho, tried upgrading Foxit & it sent all of my other portables a bit weird. I kept getting some strange message about something to do with my apps couldn't open as they were read-only or something. I couldn't make top'nor'tail of it. I uninstalled Foxit portable & replaced it with Sumatra. Problem solved.
