Until recently, I would have declared FoxIt reader the best PDF reader for speed, usability, and visual appeal. Unfortuantely, like AdobeReader, Foxit is beginning to become bogged down and is getting much slower to use. Although I still think FoxIt is a fantastic program, I decided I needed to find something more lightweight that did what I needed it to do and not much more. I also wanted to find something that was Open Source and not commercial freeware.
Introducing SumatraPDF: An Open Source, light weight, easy-to-use PDF reader.
What’s so great about Sumatra?
It does what it needs to do. It is a very simple PDF interface, you open your document and it is there. No more waiting for programs to load, no more fancy interfaces, this is just a basic, down-to-earth, PDF reader.
The load time is fantastic! I do not believe in having to pre-load applications such as you often see with programs like Adobe Reader. Sumatra, from clicking a document to opening, takes about 1 second on my i7 8GBRAM 7,200RPM HDD laptop.
I don’t feel that I can say much else about Sumatra. It is FANTASTIC at what it does and is simply simple.
What it lacks: It is a PDF Reader, not a writer in any way. It can’t fill out forms like FoxIt or Adobe Reader, nor can it add comments to documents or do digital signing. If you often need these types of features, I recommend keeping FoxIt on your computer as a backup program and using Sumatra as your primary PDF reader.
Visit their code website on Google Code: https://code.google.com/p/sumatrapdf/
Download Sumatra PDF from FileHippo: http://filehippo.com/download_sumatrapdf/
