I mentioned recently that I had dumped FoxIt Reader and was switching to Sumatra PDF because I was tired of having the admin prompt come up every time I wanted to open a PDF document (when using Vista). That’s not a good thing, and if a person doesn’t have the admin password, then how do they open a PDF document?
Well, it turns out that Sumatra PDF didn’t meet my needs, either. While trying to print a 105 page PDF document this morning, it locked up my computer. Twice.
Bye-Bye, Sumatra! It was(n’t) nice knowing you.
Next one to test: Evince PDF reader. It’s advertised as “Simply a document viewer”. It didn’t last long, either. I installed it, logged out of my Vista computer’s admin account, logged in to my user account, opened the 105 page PDF document — only to discover that the “Print” function was grayed out.
Sorry, no time to troubleshoot. Bye-Bye, Evince. You’ve manage to con-vince me quite rapidly that you’re not the reader for me.
The next one I decided to try is called MuPDF. Uh, NO. All it does is read PDF documents. I didn’t even get a menu from which to select a print option! The good news was that this one didn’t install; a simple deletion should take care of it.
Next!
Okular. It’s part of the “KDE on Windows Project” (KDE is a desktop system for the Linux operating system). Let’s try that.
To do this, you need the KDE Installer. Install it, crank it up, find the application you want to install. Select it. Agree to install the dependencies (the programs that Okular needs in order to properly run — there are “only” 42 of them!). Let them download and install.
Go eat dinner… 
Come back. Finish install. Can’t find Start Menu item. OOPS! Didn’t install it in the usual place. Double-click on PDF document, browse to Okular executable…
And nothing. Except that Windows Task Manager says that Okular is running.
Geesh. All I want to do is read a PDF document using a reader that both works AND isn’t bloatware!
OK, bye-bye Okular… And back to the drawing board.
(For the observant reader: Yes, there are no links to these products. There’s a reason for that; I don’t want to make it easy for people to download a product that I don’t like. At least not in this case…).
One last try for today (actually, it was yesterday; today is Christmas and there’s absolutely no way I’m going to spend Christmas Day testing PDF software!)… Sorax PDF Reader.
I think I saw somewhere on the website where it said that “no installation is required”. It does require installation.
So I installed it, opened a PDF document… Great. There are menus. There is a print option. So far, so good! So I set it to print in booklet mode on my printer…
And it prints in regular, “use a lot of ink” mode. *SIGH*
But I’m not yet ready to blame it on Sorax because it also wouldn’t print properly from my netbook, which is running Windows XP (I’m still using Foxit on that one). So it’s probably my printer (did I ever mention that Hewlitt Packard products are starting to drive me absolutely nuts? Why, oh WHY, HP, do you need to open a friggin’ ballon tip every time my printer does something? Don’t you think I’m perfectly capable of remembering that I didn’t turn on my printer and that it’s not available? Or how about selling a new PC that’s not filled with tons of absolute GARBAGE that I’ll never, EVER use — and if I do decide that I want to use it, I’ll go out and buy a copy just so you won’t profit from it. Yeah, I’m *THAT* kind of person, at least when it comes to companies that think that they know what’s best for me and never listen to their customers. But I digress…).
So while I’m not going to “can” Sorax just yet, neither am I going to recommend it.
But I’m starting to understand why people like Apple and Macs so much…
And if you know of (or have written) a PDF reader that prints properly, isn’t bloatware, doesn’t have “unadvertised features” (and I do run Wireshark to see if new apps are “phoning home” without my knowledge and consent), and doesn’t ask for an admin password when I try to use it on Windows Vista, please, Please, PLEASE leave a comment! At this point, I’m even willing to pay a fair price — as long as it includes an unconditional refund period (since this whole thing has turned me into a skeptic…).
