Does every program have adobe reader with it?

[Geek-9pm]

I can name 5 better formats.

OK. I will take the bait.
What are the five formats better that PDF?
Curious Minds Need to Know. 

[quaxo]

from an end user perspective, they are useful for documents intended solely for printing.

However as a electronic medium for viewing on the PC they kind of suck.

I totally agree with this. A website I maintain for a school in Thailand distributes documents, books, lesson plans, etc. in PDF format to their teachers all over Bangkok and other locations in Thailand to print at their location. Bangkok's size, the location of the company's school contracts, and traffic make it impractical to deliver these by hand on a weekly basis. It also has saved them money since they don't have to buy a license for other products for every computer the files will be used on.

These files are made from a single computer which has licensed versions of several Adobe products and MS Office (mostly made with Publisher, but Word and Excel sometimes as well). When the document is ready, it's "printed" into a PDF (with doPDF or CutePDF) and slapped on the website. The schools can then print off a master copy to take to a local copy shop for reproduction. (Something like 80 schools all over Bangkok and Thailand.)

However, as for something to sit at the computer and read, it's not very practical.

[soybean]

I mean, Adobe took something simple- Viewing PDF files, and managed to create a behemoth that is so unweildy it takes over a minute to start up on a average machine.

Hmm, sounds like somebody needs to some serious PC tuneup.  Adobe 8 launches in 2-3 seconds on both my Win XP desktop (Athlon XP 2200, 512MB) machine and my Vista laptop (Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core, 1.7GHz, 2GB), both of which I would consider "average", perhaps even below average, machines.  Adobe Reader performance has varied from one version to another. Version 6 was quite bad, then Adobe got the message and made version 7 much speedier in launching.

I, personally, like PDFs. They are very handy at times, especially for printing forms.

I agree. I do some tax work.  All federal tax forms can be downloaded and, if printed from Adobe Reader, produce exact replicas of the standard forms. And, IRS tax publications can also downloaded in PDF and read in a PDF reader.  Likewise, for state tax forms and publications and many local (city and school district) tax forms.  Many, if not all, federal forms can be filled out in Adobe Reader and saved with the entered data retained. 

I would think the benefit of PDF is obvious.  It's a universal format, meaning anyone can view it because PDF readers (Adobe, Foxit, etc.) are free. 

I think I do agree with the comments about reading lengthy documents. To read an e-book on the computer screen is not particularly appealing. But, for shorter documents, such as forms, newsletters, shorter user manuals, etc., PDF makes a lot of sense, in my opinion.  It's a good way to distribute such material and know that the recipient will be able to view it.

And, yes, it's also a "green" thing.  It is a paper-saving technique.

[BC_Programmer]

the last time I used Reader was on my 350Mhz machine. Obviously not fast, but since foxit reader started in less then ten seconds, it seemed stupid to take so much longer for Reader.

[Reno]

pdf only good for viewing. i agree, foxit reader is faster and small in size compare to adobe.

up until today, i can't figure out how to read pdf and insert the contents to database without paying, had to save it in csv format. so keeping 2 types, pdf & csv. pdf for human to read, csv for computer to read.

[soybean]

pdf only good for viewing.

up until today, i can't figure out how to read pdf and insert the contents to database without paying, had to save it in csv format. so keeping 2 types, pdf & csv. pdf for human to read, csv for computer to read.

PDF was designed for viewing documents, not to be a data source for a database, spreadsheet, etc.  It doesn't even make sense to discuss PDF as a data source for .csv files to be fed into some other application.

...foxit reader is faster and small in size compare to adobe.

Yep, that's true, and I agree it is sufficient for many users.  But, I believe Adobe Reader has some extra bells and whistles that some users may like having, and those extra features explain it's larger size.

[Reno]

PDF was designed for viewing documents, not to be a data source for a database, spreadsheet, etc.  It doesn't even make sense to discuss PDF as a data source for .csv files to be fed into some other application.

distributing documents as pdf is like distributing text file in .jpg format.
if i have hundreds of pdf files in a folder and need to extract few numbers from it, then i have to torture my self viewing the pdf one by one, scrolling down, and manually input to db. **sigh**
somemore, data can become garbage because of human error while inputting, and then garbage data will cause fatal result in decision making.

why people love to distribute documents in pdf format? html, chm, word or anything else other than pdf would be better.

[kpac]

distributing documents as pdf is like distributing text file in .jpg format.
if i have hundreds of pdf files in a folder and need to extract few numbers from it, then i have to torture my self viewing the pdf one by one, scrolling down, and manually input to db. **sigh**
somemore, data can become garbage because of human error while inputting, and then garbage data will cause fatal result in decision making.

why people love to distribute documents in pdf format? html, chm, word or anything else other than pdf would be better.

Most of that makes absolutely no sense.

[quaxo]

Most of that makes absolutely no sense.

Not only did it not make sense, the parts that did make sense are inaccurate.

The content inside a PDF is selectable, copyable, searchable and, with the right program, editable.