Travel Technology - PDF Writer

Just wondering which Free PDF writer would u recommend that is suitable for a Netbook (so not resource intensive) and produce a good quality output?

I've always had great results with pdf995.com. Very lightweight. Sure, the popup web page everytime it prints something is annoying, but that's why it's free!

CutePDF works well and has no annoying ads.

Another PDF995 user here.

Primo PDF. Works well.

www.primopdf.com (http://www.primopdf.com)

Personally I use doPDF

http://www.dopdf.com/

I've used both pdf995 and PrimoPDF, and both produce nice ourput. For Pdf995, I sprung for rhe $10 to support their effort, which got rid of the splash screen ad.

Cheers.

check out: http://www.techsupportalert.com/best-free-pdf-writer.htm

CutePDF works well and has no annoying ads.

+1. Adds itself as another printer, so you can print to PDF from any app.

CutePDF works well and has no annoying ads.

Agreed. I like that it's simple and seamless to use.

CutePDF is pretty slow for me. I use PDF Creator (http://sourceforge.net/projects/pdfcreator/). It's free and open-source. Works on all platforms AFAIK.

Primo PDF. Works well.

+ 1 for PrimoPDF.

If you have multiple users on the machine or belong to a domain, make sure to install as an admin or it can do some freaky things.

Another +1 for PrimoPDF.

I use PDF Creator (http://sourceforge.net/projects/pdfcreator/). It's free and open-source. Works on all platforms AFAIK.

I'm using it on Vista64

Win2PDF (http://www.win2pdf.com/products/win2pdf.htm)

PrimoPDF. No ads. I use it quite a bit at home and it's always worked flawlessly.

I doin't know if this is particularly what you're after, but in OpenOffice, there's an export to .pdf option. That's what I use on my HP Mini.

Chris

CutePDF works well and has no annoying ads.

I like the ease and versatility of CutePDF, but the files it creates seem to be larger than I would expect from a .pdf. Has anyone else noticed that?
I use it on both my (XP) desktop and my (Vista) laptop.

As an update - I just installed Bullzip PDF Printer (downloaded from the writeup of the Best Free PDF Creators someone posted above) and it's going to be my new favorite. Quick and feature-rich, it does all the stuff I want CutePDF to do that CutePDF doesn't.

Thanks all!

^^

As an update - I just installed Bullzip PDF Printer (downloaded from the writeup of the Best Free PDF Creators someone posted above) and it's going to be my new favorite. Quick and feature-rich, it does all the stuff I want CutePDF to do that CutePDF doesn't.

Thanks all!

^^
Glad to help. Save that website... very useful.

Another vote for PDF Creator -- it's one of the first utilities to go on every machine I buy/reimage. Including my HP Mini.

Regarding that comparison review linked above, I haven't read it all, because I was a bit surprised (and stopped reading) when I hit this part:

"The only item PDF Creator failed at was printing a web page to pdf. I was unable to get consistent output and generally the program produced an error and exited. This can be a major issue for many users."

Printing web pages (such as, well, boarding passes, hotel reservations, itineraries, ....) is my MAIN use case for PDF Creator. I do it all the time and never had a problem. So I am not sure what the author of that review was doing wrong, but I sure can't reproduce the problem. And yes, I use it in Firefox, Chrome and (rarely) IE.

I've used both CutePDF (home) and PDF Creator (work) in Win XP environments. No problems or complaints with either one.

CutePDF was free. I believe PDF Creator required a license but my employer had a corporate license.

I also use PDFCreator on various computers with Win2k and WinXP and have never had a problem printing from web pages.

Note there are a bunch of programs out there with similar names, but I'm talking about the free, open-source one available here:

http://sourceforge.net/projects/pdfcreator/

As an update - I just installed Bullzip PDF Printer (downloaded from the writeup of the Best Free PDF Creators someone posted above) and it's going to be my new favorite. Quick and feature-rich, it does all the stuff I want CutePDF to do that CutePDF doesn't.

Thanks all!

^^

+1 for Bullzip. Merges into existing PDFs, works great for me. I used PDF995, then CutePDF, for years. At some point I read a review or recommendation (in PCMagazine possibly?) rating BullZip as the best. I agree.

Another vote for Primo PDF. It's free and includes a print driver -- it looks to the computer like a printer and can take the print output from any application and automatically create a PDF. I have Adobe 8 Standard, but I prefer the Primo PDF printer driver.

It's free and includes a print driver -- it looks to the computer like a printer and can take the print output from any application and automatically create a PDF.

I would have thought that's how all these tools work? (certainly PDFCreator does)

I would have thought that's how all these tools work? (certainly PDFCreator does)The printer driver is secondary to the primary purpose of PDF programs, which is to create and manipulate PDFs from a variety of sources (scanners, files, etc.). PDF Creator is a good program, too, but not free (unless you bought OmniPage -- which I did -- it comes with it._

The printer driver is secondary to the primary purpose of PDF programs, which is to create and manipulate PDFs from a variety of sources (scanners, files, etc.). PDF Creator is a good program, too, but not free (unless you bought OmniPage -- which I did -- it comes with it._

Which "PDF Creator" is not free? The highly functional tool PDFCreator (http://sourceforge.net/projects/pdfcreator/) is entirely free. It appears as though there are multiple products going by that name(?).

Perhaps you're thinking of this one (http://www-pdfcreator.com/)? It shows up well down the list when you google "PDF Creator" . . .

Which "PDF Creator" is not free? The highly functional tool PDFCreator (http://sourceforge.net/projects/pdfcreator/) is entirely free. It appears as though there are multiple products going by that name(?).

Perhaps you're thinking of this one (http://www-pdfcreator.com/)? It shows up well down the list when you google "PDF Creator" . . .I was thinking of ScanSoft's PDF Create.

CutePDF is pretty slow for me. I use PDF Creator (http://sourceforge.net/projects/pdfcreator/). It's free and open-source. Works on all platforms AFAIK.

I used to use that, but it was flaky in Vista. I switched to CutePDF....same thing and worked in Vista.

The printer driver is secondary to the primary purpose of PDF programs, which is to create and manipulate PDFs from a variety of sources

While perhaps that is your experience, it is certainly not Universal Truth.

Does any of this FREE PDF Writers can do this:
-Edit PDF files with text, image, and page editing tools?

Not exactly what you're asking, but a) Word Perfect X3 (yes, I'm still one of those) can be had on eBay for ~$20 and it will open pdf files for editing, b) PDF to Word http://www.quick-pdf.com/pdf-to-word.htm does a fantastic job (it was one of those free-for-one-day-only things that Spiff highlighted a while back), there are numerous websites that claim to convert pdf files to Word for free; e.g., http://www.pdfonline.com/pdf2word/

Get a Mac!

+1 on primoPDF

Not exactly what you're asking, but a) Word Perfect X3 (yes, I'm still one of those) can be had on eBay for ~$20 and it will open pdf files for editing, b) PDF to Word http://www.quick-pdf.com/pdf-to-word.htm does a fantastic job (it was one of those free-for-one-day-only things that Spiff highlighted a while back), there are numerous websites that claim to convert pdf files to Word for free; e.g., http://www.pdfonline.com/pdf2word/

cblaised:

Thanks! Those are interesting programs, but don't help me a lot. I want to type in (PDF) forms, which I downloaded from the Internet .. IRS forms .... applications etc.

USAFAN, I might be misinterpreting your most recent comment but:

If you want to type in a PDF, the PDF itself has to be fillable already, unless you want to go through the effort of making it fillable (time-consuming to say the least). The filling and printing can be done with simple Adobe Acrobat Reader (free).

If you want to save the content of the form once it's filled, then you will need a different solution that can generate a new PDF.

Get a Mac!

Cheapest Mac is $600, how exactly would that be a better solution than one of the many PDF applications for the PC?

(And yes, I'm being sarcastic)

CutePDF. Always works on every platform from every app.

USAFAN, I might be misinterpreting your most recent comment but:

If you want to type in a PDF, the PDF itself has to be fillable already, unless you want to go through the effort of making it fillable (time-consuming to say the least). The filling and printing can be done with simple Adobe Acrobat Reader (free).

If you want to save the content of the form once it's filled, then you will need a different solution that can generate a new PDF.Adobe 8 has a "typewriter" function that lets you add text to non-fillable PDF documents.

There seems to be free version of PDFZilla being offer here today

http://www.giveawayoftheday.com/

I have used pdfill for modify pdf files. I think it cost $20.

I have used pdfill for modify pdf files. I think it cost $20.

shawbridge:

Thanks! I think that's program I need ... for only $19.99:

http://www.pdfill.com/

...If the PDF file is a non fill-in form, Adobe Reader has no way of entering data on the form. The only solution to this up until now was to dish out more than $500 to purchase the complete Adobe Acrobat program in order to perform those tasks. But now with PDFill PDF Editor you can do all these tasks at a fraction of the cost. Furthermore, you can open PDF file, add commenting annotations or draw shapes. The edited documents can then be saved directly back to the original PDF file.....