Free PDF creation and reading tools

I think most people are familiar with PDF files. Portable Document Format (PDF) is a file format created by Adobe Systems in 1993 for document exchange. A PDF has all of the formatting intact with text and pictures, and it can be read by a PDF reader like Adobe acrobat reader which is free. However, the program to create PDF files from Adobe (like most Adobe products) is very expensive. Adobe Acrobat 9 is selling on Amazon right now for $239 new at a discount. Adobe reader is a whopping 43MB in size and if your computer is a little older it is really slow opening files. I noticed this when I worked as a trainer in a call center, the call center that used PDF files for product information. A support representative would have to sit and wait for Acrobat reader to load and then open files using up precious time on the call.

Luckily for us we have choices to write and read PDF files that are absolutely free and fast. Here are some of them:

Foxit Reader This is my personal favorite for viewing PDF files. It's fast and works great for opening any PDF file 5.3 MB in size compared to the 43MB bloat of Adobe's reader.

Here is an online program for viewing PDF files. It will also open your uploaded Word and postscript files.

XPDF is an open source option for viewing PDF files.

PDFTK is a PDF toolbox which allows you to do some serious manipulation to PDF file, like merging and splitting them apart.

Now the absolute easiest way to create a PDF file is simply to use Open office. Even if you have an existing Word, Excel, or PowerPoint document you can load it into Open Office and save it as a PDF file that can be read by any reader.

Another way to create PDFs by using any of your favorite programs is to use open source PDFCreator. PDFCreator acts as a printer option. Simply select it as the printer when you print from a favorite application and Viola! you have a PDF file.

So now that you have your free PDF tools in hand go out there and make some digital ink!

Dan