Adobe Acrobat Reader.....

[SeeMoreDigital]

Is it just me or has anybody else noticed how big the Adobe Acrobat reader application has got over the years?

According to "Add or Remove Programs" v6.0.1 now stand in at a massive 44.25MB. And the v6.0.2 update adds a further 5.66MB!!!

Is there any real need for this or are there any scalled down alternatives?


Cheers

[buzzqw]

GhostView/GhostScript

http://sourceforge.net/projects/ghostscript/
http://www.cs.wisc.edu/~ghost/gsview/

install ghostscript 8.14 and GSview 4.6

Very good and quite stable !

BHH

[Brother John]

In fact it has not only gotten huge but also SLOW. Loading pdfs is a real pain.
I think the program could easily be half the size and twice as fast. Just look at the menus and count all the functions you have never used and never will. Microsoft-like bloat mania...

[McoreD]

Have you guys noticed how big Sun Java 2 RE is? Now it is 107 MB!

[buzzqw]

you can use ar-speedup

http://www.tnk-bootblock.co.uk/prods/misc/index.php

(even if i dislike it)

BHH

[SeeMoreDigital]

Personally it would be great to be able to dump Acrobat altogether and have something else to open up pdf's


Cheers

[buzzqw]

i repeat
GhostView/GhostScript !

try it !

Free, GPL, and fassst

BHH

[Brother John]

Originally posted by McoreD
Have you guys noticed how big Sun Java 2 RE is? Now it is 107 MB!
Looks like you confused the Java SDK and the Java Runtime Environment. Java RE 1.4.2_04, win32, multilanguage is ca. 14.5 MB.

Download for ar-speedup always aborts. Anyone else got this problem?

[McoreD]

I was talking about the size of the Java 2 RE after it is installed. :)

Had to the program but I managed to get it.
If you are still getting the problem, go to the following URL:
http://img31.imageshack.us/my.php?loc=img31&image=ar-speedupzip1.jpg

In IE: Copy the image and paste in My Documents
In Mozilla/Opera: Save the Image As

Change the file extension from jpg to zip.

[smiller667]

Slow loading is mostly due to the 100s of plugins being loaded at startup - just get rid of the ones you don't want or need (ar speedup probably does just that), and it'll be much faster.

On Un*x, I'd recommend xpdf ... fast & it supports Acrobat 6 files (Acroread does NOT, btw, it is stuck at ver. 5).

[Brother John]

JRE installed: ~35 MB (without WebStart). How many of them did you install? ;)

Thx, your "picture" worked.
And ... wow, Acrobat is really fast now! Well below 5 secs. That's perfectly acceptable.

Still, 18 MB download is heavy. Modem users will love it, me included ... but, hey, university's got the bandwidth - and I've got the usb stick :)