I just did a complete restore on my 4 yo Compaq Evo D510, and don't want to install Adobe Acrobat with all the bloat-ware attached to it. Can anyone recommend a decent substitute for it that isn't bloated with a bunch of crap I don't need? This is the second restore I've done, so I am being more judicious about what I put on it. When I first got it, I put lots of needless freeware crap on it, which led to the first restore. This second restore is a result of it going FUBAR'ed after installing the XP SP 3 'downgrade'. Shoulda known better than to do that. TIA!

Updated title to let others know that solution has been found, no further replies needed, though I appreciate the suggestions.

foxit

Foxit

There's a way to make Acrobat to work and load faster. I read an article, which explained that if you leave 2 specific files in the plugins folder and delete or move the others, it will work faster. The only reason why Acrobat is loading slow is because it had to read teh content of the plugins folder and load every single plugin available there. If you're familiar with Adobe Photoshop, it has the same problem.

But for a very simple functionality foxit works for me.

bridgeforsale said:Try an older versrion of Acrobat Reader

There are several problems with that, (1) some files will not work with older versions, (2) Adobe nags me to update, especially if/when the file doesn't work in the older version. I'll stick with the Foxit recommended by several. It's up-to-date, not bloated with crap I don't need, and has performed flawlessely for me so far.

Used Foxit for a couple months now, and I highly recommend.

You can use SumatraPDF. It's open source, designed to be lightweight, and fast. It also has no external dependencies. I use it on a thumb drive (along w/ a bunch of stuff from portableapps.com to carry customizations, games, etc with me (and keep them off my work computer).