If you have to look at many PDF documents, you’ll probably know that Adobe Acrobat Reader is a clunky, bloated and slow application to use. Opening a PDF from a website can become a major hassle when you know that clicking on the link will result in your PC grinding to a halt for a few minutes while Acrobat Reader starts up. Don’t put up with this any longer - there’s a free piece of software which opens PDF documents much more quickly: Foxit Reader
As far as we can tell, Foxit Reader displays PDF files perfectly, and it manages to do it in a fraction of the time. This lightweight application weighs in at under 3Mb, compared to 20Mb for Acrobat Reader, and yet it still manages to offer a selection of useful features such as the ability to save as a plain text file, annotate a document, and fill out PDF forms.
Foxit Reader is not an open source application, but the basic version is completely free (you can pay for some advanced features) and we think it’s a significant improvement over Acrobat Reader. If you view a lot of PDF files, you’ll find this software invaluable.
The software is only available for Windows, and you can download a copy from: http://www.foxitsoftware.com/pdf/rd_intro.php