Adobe Acrobat is actually adware. Check the top right of the window once you've started it. There's a small banner there that changes during the course of the program.
It is the reason why the version reported here is 5.x ...
The free - as in beer, speech and (obviously) adverts - viewer for pdf files is of course gsview (http://www.cs.wisc.edu/~ghost/gsview/). In combination with GhostScript (needed for the viewer anyway) and a suitable printer-driver (CutePDF Writer claims to be free of adverts - can someone verify that: http://www.cutepdf.com/Products/CutePDF/writer.asp) one can replace most of Acrobat. Add to that pdftk (http://www.accesspdf.com/index.php?topic=pdftk) to encrypt and decrypt pdf files with a password, and the suite is complete. For viewing comments in pdf files and a few other activities, one still needs the Adobe Reader. If you fall into this category, it is easy to turn the adverts off: Open the preferences, go to the "Startup" panel, and make sure that "Show messages and automatically update" is *not* checked. (This is for version 7, but I believe that version 6 has the same preference). Maarten
There are optios DURING DOWNLOAD to install several third party applications (yahoo toolbar etc). These can all be unchecked. Additionally the vendor's own advertising is in the software but can be disabled. So Acrobat now carries a "yellow" flag to draw attention to these installation pitfalls.
Use 4.0.. its small (5.2MB) as opposed to 6.0 and 7.0 (almost 20 MB) get it now at http://oldversion.com/program.php?n=acrobat this should be the recommended version.
There is pretty much no reason to use Adobe's product just to view PDF files.
Add your comment (it will become public)