Sumatra PDF Viewer

I hate bloatware.

Bloatware is software that was one small, fast, and elegant. However, due to added “features” that are often not anything customers want, it can become bloated.

A perfect example is Adobe pdf reader. The pdf format is a clever one. It stands for portable document format. It allows documents to be displayed nicely formatted with original fonts and graphics in place.

Adobe would have you believe they own the rights to the pdf format. They would like you to think that you have to purchase a copy of Acrobat before you can create pdf's of your own.

Hooey.

First of all, if you have not yet downloaded your own copy of Open Office from http://www.openoffice.org, what are you waiting on? It's a full-featured office suite that will handle all office document formats, including anything Microsoft has. It also allows you to easily create pdf's. Its cost? It's free!

Now, for a pdf reader that isn't bloatware (Adobe Reader was taking up 63 megs of space on my system before I uninstalled it). Presenting Sumatra pdf Viewer.

It's a tiny download that is less than a megabyte. Once you install it, it takes up less than a meg of space on your system. And it opens instantly!

So download the installer, uninstall Adobe Reader (it took a full two minutes on my screaming fast dual-core system), and install and run Sumatra once. It will politely ask you if you would like to associate pdf files with Sumatra. Tell it yes, and enjoy instant-opening pdf viewing.

Here's to the death of bloatware!

http://blog.kowalczyk.info/software/sumatrapdf/

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