I have an aversion to spending the best part of £300 for Adobe's UK priced ripoff - does anyone know of an alternative legal product with the same PDF read and write functions?
There are alternatives that will write to a printer but not to a file - full functionality is needed!

Foxit Products

I stopped using the Adobe Reader long ago. It’s large, slow, resource hungry and insecure. As a normal user, I content myself with the fast & free Foxit Reader. But then I don’t need any enhanced functionality.

If you do need extra functionality, have a look at the following:

Pro pack, up to $39

Code:

http://www.foxitsoftware.com/pdf/reader/

Foxit PDF Creator, up to $30

Code:

http://www.foxitsoftware.com/pdf/reader/whatsnew23.htm

Foxit PDF Editor, up to $99

Code:

http://www.foxitsoftware.com/pdf/reader/addons.htm#editor

If you order more than 3 different products at the same time, you will get 15% discount automatically.

thanks Bobcat - I have been looking at something called PDF sign & seal which someone came up with on another forum - about the same sort of price but not the easiest thing to use so far!

I vouch for Foxit's products too. I prefer them over Adobe's resource-hogging alternatives.

I'll have a look at that as well!

FoxIt is an excellent alternative as I use it myself. Bloatware has long become a thing of the past (i.e.: *cough cough* Adobe Acrobat)

Seems to be lots of support for Foxit so will give it a go!

I am also a proud Foxit user, it's a lot easier to use than Adobe, and just like any other software, it doesn't have security issues like Adobe because it is less popular. It has an excellent PDF printer as well. You can't go wrong (and that's quite obvious seeing that every post is basically pointing in that direction)

I'll go and get it now, seeing as the accolades are getting too much!

PDF995 is a print driver which will create a pdf on disk from any application;
freeware too

Cheers jobeard - will have a look at that too, but all I really need is an easy to use PDF editor and creator - it is a given that they will all open PDFs I guess!

The cool part is creating a PDF from ANY application.

Then you can use Foxit Edit to tweak as you please.

Jobeard - tell me how the editing tool works? Does it open the original app (say Excel) to make changes to the PDF file and resave as a PDF, or do you save the PDF file with a .xls (say) extension and then use the original app (Excel) to make changes to it?
Can files be password protected?
Sorry to be a pain, but I need to be sure this thing does what I want it to do!!

PDF995 is indeed another good driver (which I have used before Foxit ) , however if you have the Foxit editor. it already has it's own printer driver which means fewer apps/processes running on your PC. It's awesome, I've even created simple text files and print them to PDF with Foxit (or previously PDF995 so the documents won't normally be edited by recipients.

interesting -- how do you use Foxit to create a PDF from an email, say while reading within Thunderbird? File->Print->PDF995 sure looks simple to me!

The EDIT feature is an add-on to Foxit Read (for a smal fee, which I have not elected to do as yet). I can copy/paste PDF content, but as I understand it, Foxit Edit works directly with the PDF content. I could not see a reasonable means to open with the original application -- who says you have it installed?

Same way... I can actually print this web page right now by clicking on 'print' in the File menu, and select 'Foxit PDF Printer' now, just as before when I would select 'PDF995" as the printer. If you look under the 'printers and faxes' tab in your Start Menu, you'll see it listed as a printer. Very cool Actually if you had to edit the email, just do wehat you have to do and... print using the Foxit printer.

hm; The free-bee doesn't shown that in the file menu.

Oops! I'm sorry, I seemed to have missed that one. Yes I have the Foxit Reader/Editor,( I thought that's what AlbertLionheart was after ) it's the Editor module that has the PDF printer.
Hopefully someday, they can add it to the reader as well. (and then Foxit will have security issues like Adobe, and then, and then, and then)...

Hoare’s Law

Hoare's Law of Large Programs: Inside every large program is a small program struggling to get out.

And Adobe v Foxit is a perfect demonstration of the above Law.