Free PDF reader for mac - recommendations?

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gzt

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#112722 18-Dec-2012 11:55

Looking for something nice and light that supports comments/annotations. Mac's Preview does it all but clunky and slow on large documents.

My preference on Windows is FoxIt. I have FoxIt running under Wine on OSX. Performance is ok but if there is something useful and native I'm missing out on I'd like to know about it.

myopinion

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#734264 18-Dec-2012 12:34

Adobe reader runs perfectly for me.

nakedmolerat

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#734284 18-Dec-2012 12:49

Skim PDF

gzt

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#734292 18-Dec-2012 13:00

Very interesting. Apple remote support! There is one review saying Skim annotation cannot be viewed in Adobe/Preview etc. Do you know if that is still the case?

gzt

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#734577 18-Dec-2012 21:11

Skim cannot see the annotations I created using FoxIt. Skim is nice to use and the search function works well. I will keep it for further evaluation and look in on the project now and then.

gehenna

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#734605 18-Dec-2012 21:48

What kind if problems did you run into with Preview?

gzt

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#734633 18-Dec-2012 22:45

Slow search in large documents. Not just slow but killing system performance during the search. I assumed high memory use during that time, but did not actually check the monitor to confirm.

gehenna

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#734642 18-Dec-2012 23:12

That does seem odd. I daily use Preview for huge PDFs, searching works fine. Do you have a recent Mac?

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gzt

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#734903 19-Dec-2012 12:54

I looked into the Preview search problem. In case there is any confusion, Search is different to Find. Preview memory usage increases each time a search is performed and even when the same search is performed later on. Perform enough searches and things get pretty ugly.

I'm running Lion on a C2D 2GHZ with 2.5GB. It is usually adequate for my needs and could use a memory upgrade but Preview's index strategy/memory management is the problem in this instance. Skim is more efficient in this area.

gehenna

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#734906 19-Dec-2012 13:01

That's interesting info. I would have thought things would be indexed by Spotlight in the same way most other documents are. Good to know!

Goosey

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#734933 19-Dec-2012 14:05

Im running adobe acrobat professional ...didnt cost me a thing but cant remember where I got it from !
My macbook pro is send gen from 2007 and running lion.

BTR

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#734934 19-Dec-2012 14:08

I suspect the problem is your machine GZT, My Core I3 iMac has no problems at all searching large PDF files. If you were running snow leopard you might have better luck, I have found running 10.7 and 10.8 on older machines that the hardware can't keep up with the system.