I have to disagree with jkontherun for once. Last I tried, Foxit’s rendering was very poor. And the new version does not advertize correct rendering. Speed and resources have some importance, but these are secondary to getting the rendering right.

Adobe Reader is good these days (last two versions), for a computer that is capable of running XP or Vista, Adobe Reader is not taxing. It also supports all pdf features unlike Foxit.

I like Foxit and PDF-Xchange because they are lean, but Adobe Reader is the only one of the bunch that recognizes the correct page number when I type it in to scroll to that page. Why is that?

I do like Foxit as a light pdf reader, but there are some problems with it. The biggest is the fact that I use pdf Annotator with my tablets to mark up pdf files. Although my highlights and annotations look fine on the screen in Foxit, if I print them, the highlighting will cover the text and make it unreadable. This does not occur in Adobe Reader.

Also, to get any of the truely great capabilities in Foxit you either need the pro edition, or agree to install some “crapware”. Again, I love it on my netbook and UMPC to browse pdf files, but can’t get rid of Adobe Reader…yet!

And don’t forget that Foxit still has their PDF viewer for PocketPC in development!

They just released another beta update a couple of months ago. And it’s a great way to read ebooks on a small screen. They have versions that support WM2003 and up and a whole slew of language packs for international support (but not Japanese yet..).

The betas are free and don’t seem to have any termination date on them (I used one version for over a year and a half). Go to the downloads page and scroll down to Mobile Versions.
http://www.foxitsoftware.com/downloads/index.php

Adobe’s last update for their PPC reader was… 2003, I think.

I’d love to only have only Foxit installed too, but what do you do when you get to sites that’ll only display forms when you have Adobe installed,(usually government: tax, visa applications etc). Seems crazy to have both Foxit *AND* Adobe installed, to cope with that eventuality.

Another vote for PDF-Xchange viewer. Foxit is not bad, and I will take it over Acrobat any day, but I consider Xchange viewer more polished with more features. Maybe it’s slightly slower than Foxit, but not nearly noticeable. It renders better and toolbars don’t get jumbled as in Foxit.

PDF-Xchange Viewer is a (free) excellent alternative from a long time and the one i use since 2 years. Notes, drawing, and ability to export PDF pages to graphic files (in multiple formats)… are some of many qualities.

I’m a FoxIt Reader user too, and I like it very much. Thanks to FoxIt software for bringing a real alternative.

No reason needed. I find Acrobat a slow pig. The reader has gotten good over the years, but still far far too slow for the majority of people.