Sumatra PDF viewer: free, fast, tiny, and open source

Filed under: Utilities, Windows, Productivity, Freeware

Sumatra PDF viewer: free, fast, tiny, and open source

by Brad Linder Aug 8th 2007

While Adobe may have invented the PDF format, it's no secret that Adobe Reader is a bloated program that runs slowly on most computers. We're big fans of Foxit as a lightweight alternative that opens PDF files in a flash. But the How-To Geek just turned us on to Sumatra PDF viewer, an even smaller free and open source PDF viewer.

Sumatra is a single 802KB executable file for Windows. No installation required. That means you can run Sumatra off of a flash drive. You can also set it as your default PDF viewer.

The program opens most of your common PDF files faster than you can say Adobe. It also uses keyboard shortcuts for quick navigation. And it's still under development. The most recent update came out about two weeks ago with a few new features like "save as," and the ability to display recently opened files.

Tags: adobe reader, AdobeReader, foxit, pdf, sumatra pdf viewer, SumatraPdfViewer

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

michas_pi said 10:33PM on 8-08-2007

I've been using Sumatra for a while now and I think it's awesome.

I had to dump the official Adobe Reader after the AdobeUpdater.exe process would make my CPU load shoot up to 100% and stay that way. It didn't allow itself to be terminated in the Task Manager. Thanks a lot, Adobe.

I found Sumatra after a little Google session and I am highly impressed. Props to the developer.

Sumatra does have a couple of bugs here and there with rendering PDFs correctly and printing documents in the opposite orientation that the PDF is in, but these bugs are forgivable. I mean, it's not Adobe's original software and it comes extremely close in render quality to Adobe Reader.

I love this program.

sickleclowns said 7:28AM on 8-09-2007

I tried sumatra about a month ago but switched back to foxit pdf because it was faster/less buggy. Guess I might give this another go, that thumbnail feature's reet handy. I'd use both over acrobat though reader despite the occasional rendering wierdness.

Matidio said 7:29AM on 8-09-2007

You can't search pdfs. The major shortcoming for me.

thiel said 6:22PM on 8-09-2007

At least it renders better than foxit ( which I still use alot)I have never got great text with foxit, even though I like it otherwise. Sumatra is certainly short on features, plus does anyone else have scroll wheel functionality with this???

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