Alternatives to Bloatware
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As I'm having a fresh start with Windows 7, I'm re-considering my software options.
Adobe Reader takes forever to open when you accidentally click on a pdf link on the web. Is there a faster alternative?Some time ago I replaced MSN Messenger with Pidgin and MS Office with OpenOffice. The replacements are lighter and work faster. I'm open to other suggestions for other light software for common tasks.
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http://blog.kowalczyk.info/software/sumatrapdf/download.html
its the biz as far as lightweight PDF viewers go.
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Foxit Reader http://www.foxitsoftware.com/pdf/reader/, but it doesn't show thumbnails (yet), unless you have Adobe Reader installed and do some tweaks (search google for that)
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The best for me so far with very good Firefox integration
http://www.docu-track.com/home/prod_user/PDF-XChange_Tools/pdfx_viewer
I prefer portable software - see this place for alternatives -
A very good list of freeware alternatives http://www.techsupportalert.com/ including non-Adobe PDF readers.
Foxit Reader is what I use. -
Is Adobe the only one that supports 3D pdfs?
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@jim said:
Is Adobe the only one that supports 3D pdfs?
seems to be so far... tis why I still have it installed..
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Does anyone actually use 3D PDFs to communicate with clients? A simple video seems a lot more foolproof to me. Even Quicktime VR stuff (VR panoramas and VR objects) has not seen wide adoption; I pushed them for years and no one paid attention, so I now focus on stills and video only.
Back to topic, any more "lightware" suggestions for software you use everyday?
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Initially in the modeling phase I will use it for single components, however once the whole scene is accumulated and textures mapped it becomes impractical as the pdf size is normally larger than the SU size.
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Thanks for all your suggestions. After doing some research on each option I decided for the open source one Remus suggested, Sumatra PDF viewer. All I want is to be able to read user manuals and to open the PDFs I "print" with PDF Creator. Sumatra does this nicely and at less than 2MB in size, it's completely bloat-free.
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I'll share another piece of bloat-free software I re-discovered today thanks to Fletch: The XviD codec. I tried it today in Windows 7 instead of what I usually install (DivX) and I must say that it's a LOT smoother than DivX when you are editing video, and it reads DivX-encoded content without any problem. With DivX, fast-forwarding and jumping to a specific point while cutting videos together or while synchronizing subtitles was a pain in the neck, but XviD runs smooth as a hot knife in butter. (And I recently wasted $ in upgrading my DivX license...
)Here's the link to download XviD for Windows: (Sorry, OSX, there's no XviD build for you)
http://www.xvid.org/Downloads.15.0.htmlTip: if you plan to save your sequences for further edit in Windows Live Movie Maker or any other editor, it's best to set an i-frame (or keyframe) every 30 frames. This will make seeking to a point and rewinding even smoother. To do this, Click the "more" button next to the General Purpose quality preset,
Say yes in the next dialog, and enter a maximum i-frame interval of 30.
As I said, do this if you plan to further edit your video, as this way it will be faster when seeking.
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