Replace Adobe Acrobat Reader FOREVER!!!
You know what pisses me off? It’s the little things! To quote the grunge band Bush, “It’s the little things that kill, tearing at my brains again.” Why? Because they seem to irritate the most–irritate you to death. It’s the fly buzzing around while you’re trying to relax. It’s the splinter in your hand. It’s the neighbor’s dog barking at night while you try to sleep. Little things should be fixed and not tolerated. For years I’ve been a victim of Adobe Reader’s endless automatic updates, resource grabbing, and slow runtime. It’s such bullshit! It’s just a crappie PostScript viewer! You can’t even use it to edit anything! Adobe Reader ≈ 140 MB, Notepad++ ≈ 9MB. What’s wrong with this picture?
Here was the spark that finally spurred me to action this morning. And I’ve seen this before but it just hit me particularly wrong this morning:
RESTART!!!! You got to be kidding!!! Why the Hell do I have to restart? All I did was update a viewer, really just a plugin for a browser. Adobe, do you have any idea how long it takes my work computer to restart? What could be so important that you’re making me reboot? If it’s such a pain for me, it’s most likely a pain for other people too. Have you considered the irritation you’re causing everyone?
The Solution: Foxit
Okay, I’ve had enough. I uninstalled Adobe Reader, and I installed a replacement product that my friend Brandon recommended called Foxit. http://www.foxitsoftware.com/pdf/reader/
- My first worry was that it doesn’t work with my browsers. However, that worry was unfounded. I tested pulling up a PDF from a URL in IE8, Firefox, and even Chrome (my browser of choice).
- My first observation was the speed. It was so much faster than Adobe. (Didn’t Adobe invent PDF’s?)
- Plus, the Interface looks pretty refined and easy to use.
- Foxit install is 10.44 MB versus Adobe Reader 9.3 at 143 MB
I don’t completely endorse the product because I haven’t had substantial time using it, but so far I like it. The main thing is that I got a chance to pwn Adobe! Take that you bastards!
Marisa Roman
Daniel Brown
Josh Carroll
I think your problem is Windows
If you were using Ubuntu for example you wouldn’t have this problem.
Eusebiu Blindu
July 6, 2010
Eusebiu, I’m reminded of the words of a great singer, songwriter, “Every Rose Has It’s Thorn.” If it’s software there are going to be problems somewhere, whether it’s Windows or Linux or Mac OS.
Daniel Brown
July 7, 2010
Another thing I like about Foxit is that I can annotate and bookmark the PDF file I’m reading with it
Green2
July 7, 2010
Very cool, Green! I’ll have to check that out!
Daniel Brown
July 7, 2010
check out Sumatra. It is an open source pdf reader that i like. lightweight.. free… no-nags.
http://blog.kowalczyk.info/software/sumatrapdf/index.html
Corey
July 7, 2010
Thanks for the contribution Corey. It’s good to know that there’s tons of solutions to rid yourself of Adobe. Sumatra looks really lightweight, which I like. It’s cool that you can run it without install, registration, etc. But I don’t think it’s a full replacement of Adobe because of it’s lack of browser plugin support. I don’t want to have to download a pdf just to view it. Aside from the browser thing, it’s cool. Thanks man!
Daniel Brown
July 7, 2010
I call this slit-my-wrists annoying. There is no data loss, but user goodwill is lost forever.
Marlena Compton
July 8, 2010
Yes, exactly, Marlena! You can do a lot of things to a user, and they will keep coming back. But if you take them over that threshold of “Mad as Hell and Not Going to Take It”, you’ve lost them forever.
Daniel Brown
July 12, 2010
You summed up my feelings pretty well. Between Flash and Acrobat, Adobe give the impression to people that use their software, that they don’t matter. We use modern operating systems that should rarely need to reboot, except for Adobe and their security/bug updates.
I work in graphics and use the Creative Suite, so I’m forced to keep Acrobat loaded, and pay for the privilege to keep rebooting for Adobe’s faulty software engineering.
thomaus
August 27, 2010