Best Acrobat Reader

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Jan 14, 2002
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Which version do think is the best? 6.0 seems too bloated. I have 5.05 sitting here waiting to install but I can get all the other old versions too. Whcih would you install?

C
 
Acrobat 6 is my preference, there was a link on the Inq or something where you could remove a bunch of plug-ins and crap to speed up the load time.
 
I had 5.1 installed, and it was excruciatingly slow. 15 seconds to redraw a one page pdf ~ 420KB. I said redraw, as in if you scrolled all the way to the bottom. HW config: 2xP3-900, 1GB, Radeon 32MB (original). Switching to a Radeon 9000 w/64MB made no difference. You'd think the stupid thing would be in the veido card's RAM already! The m/b has a 1x/2x AGP slot.

I uninstalled 5.1 and installed 5.05 - blazingly fast. With some pdfs I do get a whine window that newer features cannot be displayed.

Along with jtr, I'm probably using the slowest system here, so nobody else will probably feel the pain as much as I did.
 
Since this is for my 500mhz laptop, I think I go with the 5.05 I've already downloaded then. Thanks guys.

C
 
Pradeep said:
Acrobat 6 is my preference, there was a link on the Inq or something where you could remove a bunch of plug-ins and crap to speed up the load time.
Works on all 5.x and up (at least; haven't tries in on 4.x). Rename the plugins directory (C:\Program Files\Adobe\Acrobat 5.0\Reader\plug_ins) to something else. I use un_plug_ins. Reader will load very fast. If you actually find a plugin that's needed, close reader, rename the dir back to plug_ins, restart Reader. Rename back to un_plug_ins when done.

Alternately, rename the dir, create a new plug_ins dir, and only copy into it the plug ins you actually use regularly.
 
I never found load times bothersome. It was after AcroReader and the file were loaded that speed became an issue. As such, I think the plug-ins trick will do nuttin fer me. I read that article on the Inq too. 8)
 
Although it sounds like Kevin has already settled on 5.1, I just wanted to pipe up and put my vote in for the v6 basic, as oppsosed to its full version counterpart. Details outlined in this thread here.
 
I prefer Acrobat 4.0 full over anything. Unfortunately, it can't read some of the PDF's created by newer versions -- especially those e-Books with security and payment authentication features built-in.

Speaking of which, man do I hate e-Books purchased online. Lost $50 after purchasing non-functional e-Books where amazon says it's Adobe's fault, talk to them and Adobe says it's Amazon's fault, talk to them.
 
On an Acrobat related note, at work I sometimes have to deal with hundreds of PDFs. Is there a tool of somesort that allows me to point it into a directory full of pdfs, and it would give me back the number of pages in each pdf, and/or the total number of pages? It's a pain having to open each one individually.

TIA.
 
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