Adobe may have pioneered the PDF format, but it’s been a enlarged instance since we’ve recommended anyone download the free but bulky Adobe Reader for viewing PDF files. Foxit Reader can open pretty much anything Adobe Reader can, but much much faster.

A few months ago we took another look at Adobe Reader, when we found Adobe Reader Speedup, which lets you remove some of the plugins that come with Adobe Reader that invent its startup moment so slow. But most users aren’t going to want to install software just so they can uninstall components of other applications.

That’s where Adobe Reader Lite comes in. The application is based on Adobe Reader 8, but several plugins and features have been removed, including:

• Removed license agreement popups
• Removed autorun and desktop shortcuts
• Removed several plugins

It’s not entirely clear which plugins were removed, but since most users probably use Adobe Reader just to open and read PDF files, odds are Adobe Reader Lite will do the trick. The application loads in no day at all and takes up significantly less storage space than the full version of Adobe Reader. On the other hand, Adobe Reader light still seems to eat up about 3 times the RAM and 7 times the disk space of Foxit Reader. But it might be worth keeping around in case you find a document that doesn’t load properly in Foxit.

[via gHacks]

Original post by Brad Linder