A small company called Foxit Software has developed a small free program that reads PDF files just as well as Adobe. It's all contained in a single executable file, meaning that you don't have to install it, and you can even carry it around on a thumbdrive.

The Foxit Reader can be downloaded here. What you'll get is a ZIP file (compressed folder) with a single file called FoxitReader.exe. Simply copy the file to a place on your computer (I copied it to the My Documents folder) and run it. The Foxit Reader will start up, and ask you if you want to make it the default PDF reader. 

Foxit doesn't have all the features of Adobe Reader - if you use advanced PDF features, such as filling in forms, then Foxit may not be for you. But for 99% of Internet users, Foxit is all you need - it opens up PDF files quickly and painlessly. No more waiting minutes for the Adobe Reader to load up!

Foxit is small enough so that it has become a key piece of software on my portable USB thumbdrive. After a few eeks of use, I uninstalled Adobe Reader for good, and my computer is running noticeably better.

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