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Free PDF Alternatives -- Save Yourself $700 and a Headache

by Tom Johnson on Aug 5, 2008
categories: technical-writing

Adobe Acrobat 9 Pro Extended costs $699. The download is several hundred megs, and eventually Adobe pushes out updates that break it right when you need to deliver PDFs for your latest release.

In contrast, you can download the Save as PDF or XPS add-in for Microsoft Word 2007 for free. It's less than 1 megabyte to download, and it quickly and flawlessly converts Word docs to PDF, even with hyperlinks. If you have non-Word documents to convert, Primo PDF (another free PDF alternative) will do it absolutely free.

Save as PDF or XPS

It's a wonder why people still buy Adobe Acrobat. Granted, you can combine and arrange different PDF files, and annotate PDF documents, but is that really worth hundreds of dollars?

About Tom Johnson

Tom Johnson

I'm an API technical writer based in the Seattle area. On this blog, I write about topics related to technical writing and communication — such as software documentation, API documentation, AI, information architecture, content strategy, writing processes, plain language, tech comm careers, and more. Check out my API documentation course if you're looking for more info about documenting APIs. Or see my posts on AI and AI course section for more on the latest in AI and tech comm.

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