Acrobat Reader?
Why does anyone use Acrobat Reader when Foxit Reader is out there for free?
If you haven't updated your Adobe Reader program lately, now would be a good time. Three days after the company rushed out a critical update, miscreants are actively exploiting a security flaw to execute malicious code on vulnerable machines. The SANS Internet Storm Center says here that researchers have spotted laced PDF …
Hmm. Helpful, lads.
This is a quickie script I'm using to update client pcs:
Download the standard version of Reader 9 (without Adobe Air) from:
ftp://ftp.adobe.com//pub/adobe/reader/win/9.x/9.0/enu/ AdbeRdr90_en_US_Std.exe
then you can script this silent install overnight or something:
AdbeRdr90_en_US_Std.exe /sAll /rs /l /msi /qb- /norestart
I use psexec to kick it off on each PC.
For more thorough scripts, check out http://www.appdeploy.com/packages/detail.asp?id=1328
Maybe the foxit posts should read: , and it's also free. But that's not the point.
Foxit is much smaller and much faster than the free adobe pdf reader, and (so far) less exploited.
For myself, I got tired of the constant holes in the Adobe pdf reader (now I sound like some linux zealot) and decided to try the foxit reader. I was suprised at how much smaller and faster it was (there I go again). I haven't had any problems with it so far, so now I install it on all of my machines (and again).
Good luck out there.
Who still uses free stuff from Adobe ?
It's invariably bloated, full of holes, and much worse than the independent free version that does the same thing.
If you're not a publisher of PDF files, you have no use for Adobe products. Foxit is the only thing you need - and it is a lot faster and a lot more secure than Adobe products will ever be.
And it's free as well ! What more could you ask for ?
The problem with Foxit is that it doesn't support all of the PDF format. Any file that makes use of the interactivity features of PDF will fail on Foxit - it renders the PDFs as a flat file (just as GView does).
In other words, the reason that Foxit is smaller and faster than Adobe Reader is that it does a lot less. So, use Foxit if you like for simple PDF rendering, but you'll need Adobe Reader for advanced PDF files.
Why people still use Adobe Reader I don't know. The download is 34MB which should set alarm bells ringing before you even install it. 34MB for a friggin' PDF viewer?
In comparison Foxit is only 3MB, and they also provide an .msi file so you can easily roll it out to your windows domain. Consequently updating it is also easy, new .msi and away you go.