Chuck out Adobe Reader

In my quest to find solutions that empower us poor bandwidth starved South Africans I bring you an alternative to the bloated Adobe Reader.

Many are under the impression that in order to read a PDF(Portable Document File) file you have to have Adobe's Reader. Actually anyone may create applications that read and write PDF files without having to pay royalties to Adobe Systems. The patents they hold they license royalty free, something which aided the adoption of the technology when it was battling for supremacy with other formats in the mid 90's. The problem is Adobe's Reader requires a download 27.5mb large and they irritatingly throw in unwanted and unnecessary add-ons to the installation like browser search bars!
Enter Foxit. A free PDF document viewer that opens in an instant. And it even has some extra features. Here's some reasons to switch to Foxit taken from their website.

• Incredibly small: The download size of Foxit Reader is only 1.5 M which is a fraction of Acrobat Reader 20 M size
• Breezing-fast: When you run Foxit Reader, it launches instantly without any delay. You are not forced to view an annoying splash window displaying company logo, author names, etc.
• Annotation tool: Have you ever wished to annotate (or comment on) a PDF document when you are reading it? Foxit Reader 2.0 allows you to draw graphics, highlight text, type text and make notes on a PDF document and then print out or save the annotated document.
• Text converter: You may convert the whole PDF document into a simple text file.
• High security and privacy: Foxit Reader highly respects the security and privacy of users and will never connect to Internet without users' permission. While other PDF Reader often silently connects to the Internet in the background. Foxit PDF Reader does not contain any spyware or adware.

I have been using Foxit for some time now and can highly recommend it. Those vital seconds gained when having to open PDF document make the install so worthwhile.