Monday, September 18, 2006

PDF printer that actually works

Primo PDF logoI've always liked Adobe's Acrobat file format, but the Adobe Acrobat software is becoming increasingly bloated and slow, even on fast computers. And it isn't cheap either. I've tested out many free offerings that claim to create PDF files, but none of them have worked successfully. Until now.
At the Vineyard Conference I noticed that Stew West was using a product called Primo PDF, which I hadn't heard of before. It's free. It works. In fact it works brilliantly. It installs as a PDF Printer, and when you print to this printer the PDF file is created, with the correct fonts, and landscape stuff is correctly handled.sm
By comparison, I gave up on PDFCreator because it just didn't seem to do anything and the download is huge. On the other hand, WinPDF is a tiny download but it has no idea about portrait and landscape pages and it's a demo program for Easy PDF Creator, which costs US$139. Then there is Win2PDF, which has a trial version that adds an extra page to the printout. The only problem is that it doesn't use the correct fonts for the document. Who knows if the paid version for US$35 is any better?
So my vote definitely goes for Primo PDF, which is only a 14MB download, it's free, it works, and it does a brilliant job. It's also incredibly easy and intuitive to set up.

More info on Primo PDF and links to download.

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