Wondering why my new XP install has already filled an 8GB partition, it turns out that Adobe Acrobat 9 takes up 210 MB of disk space. Astonished that a pdf reader could be so large, I googled “Adobe Reader bloat”. For an entertaining and informative read check out http://blog.micropledge.com/2008/07/adobe-reader-9/
Foxit is a good alternative. I also downloaded Foxits pdf creator (unfortuneatly not free – the evaluation copy leaves a saved by Foxit message). When experimented printing pdfs from a couple of browsers I noticed that Safari created a 1.2 MB file whilst Opera made a 78 KB file - a factor of 15. Add that on to Safari’s slow startup time Its bye bye Safari too. What was it that made me think that apple would write good PC software? I have no idea.
Only remains to see if I can unbloat Service Pack 3
Posted by richard 
