Gerry said:
Ken
Isn't the problem that it offers more than most users need?
Fair enough, Gerry. I'm not a giant fan of Adobe Reader, and didn't mean to
defend it against all attacks.
My only point here was that complaining about the *size* of a program that
uses under ten cents worth of disk space is just silly.
Too many people are living in the past when they look at the size of a
program. They see a number in the tens or hundreds of megabytes, and all
they can do is remember how small their drives used to be and how much that
amount of disk space used to cost. So their immediate reaction is "bloat."
Today's programs *are* bigger than yesterday's programs, and that's because
they have more functionality. To me, that's good, not bad. That 100MB for a
current version of Adobe Reader costs considerably less than the disk space
for whatever version of Adobe Reader was current a few years ago. The
product itself remains free, and as far as the disk space it takes up, we
now get more functionality for less money. That's not something I want to
complain about.
If someone doesn't need the extra functionality, that's fine. Don't use it.
Or use an older version. Or use an alternative pdf reader. But don't
complain about getting more for less.
The same is true of Windows. Windows XP uses much more disk space than, for
example, Windows 3.0 did. But in most people's view, it's a giant
improvement over Windows 3.0. It does much more, does it better, is more
secure, is more stable, etc. The disk space Windows XP takes is worth two US
dollars or so. I can't remember how much Windows 3.0 took, or exactly what
disk prices were like in those days, but almost certainly it was more than
$2 worth. To me that's not bloat. That's *real* progress.
That's my view. Others may (and obviously do) differ.
Most users
only need to read documents not to edit content!
Editing is a function of Adobe Acrobat. Adobe Reader can't do editing.
) Most