I always thought that free meant that I did not have to do anything to get the free item or service. I had a problem with the Adobe PDF Reader and a huge 35 Megabyte PDF which took ages to load and decided to install all the latest versions of alternative PDF viewers. The Adobe PDF Reader was not rendering the pdf file properly and it took ages to scroll and change settings.
I first thought it could be my computer because it’s not the newest anymore as you might know. A quick search revealed the portable application Sumatra which I had heard about before and the decision to install it was made quickly. The installation was unproblematic and I changed the default viewer from Adobe PDF Reader to Sumatra.
A click later showed a Please Wait Rendering notice which quickly was replaced by the first page of the pdf file that I was going to take a look at. I was able to scroll two pages and was greeted by another Please Wait Rendering notice. Although this was not what I expected the overall performance was much better.
Sumatra seems to use some sort of advanced caching which reduced the rendering period to a minimum. The pages that were rendered already where very responsive and I was able to take a look at them without further delays.
I’m not saying that Sumatra is the perfect solution but it is far better than the orginal PDF reader by Adobe. It would be interesting to know if you ran into similar troubles and if you did find a solution for them. I have tried other PDF readers in the past but not under the aspect of loading huge PDF documents into them.
Goodbye Adobe Reader Hello Sumatra