Hello readers,

For all the past times that got you bogged down by the office softwares, try these new free softwares that will make your work feel like a soothing breeze.

Presently pdf file format seems to be the most followed trend in the office corridors. So here are two most helpful softwares.

The first among the list is PDF995.

the best pdf maker

For quite a few years, PDF files have been the standard method of distributing information in a manner that ensures preservation of formatting, fonts, text, graphics, and Web links. The viewer software for Windows, Macintosh, Linux, and a number of other operating systems is free. However, until recently, the only method of creating PDF files was to purchase Adobe Acrobat for $200 or more. Several companies have now created lower-priced programs with the capability of creating PDF files that are fully compatible with Adobe’s Acrobat standard

PDF995 becomes a logical printer within Windows. It appears on your list of printers within all Windows programs. To create a PDF file, you simple create your work in the normal manner, using a word processor or genealogy program or spreadsheet or whatever application you wish. You then “print” to PDF by selecting the PDF995 “printer” from the normal Windows printer selection menu within your application. Instead of printing on paper, PDF995 creates a new PDF file of whatever name you specify.

Since this software is a printer driver it works on any windows application. I will put forward a working example. Download the software from the official site www.pdf995.com Download the program plus the driver. Most of the windows systems have print spooler service on but if you have this service stopped make sure you turn it on before you want to make pdfs. Open any text manipulating software such as microsoft word, create a new document. Once created print the document using PDF995 displayed in the options on the top of the print window and voila you have created a pdf.

There is more functionality than that though. An add-on product is available for download as well. PdfEdit995 provides many more options for use with pdf995. With pdfEdit995 you may choose to automatically display the PDF file after creating, have 3 options on how to save the files, have the ability to watermark documents or apply a stationary to them, and the ability to set up a batch of Microsoft Office files to print to the default printer (which may be set to pdf995 if you require PDF output.) The biggest feature I found though was the ability to combine documents.

Real Life Problem
Friends of mine were having problems to save online registration documents since by simply copying the text they weren’t able to preserve the formatting and also the images were unaligned. PDF995 came to their rescue and within seconds created a pdf document of their registration forms.

PdfEdit995 has the option to add new documents to the last printed document. You can now create a single PDF file from a series of programs. I used it to create a report on web site usage that came from 25 seperate web pages, each about 4 pages long. The resulting PDF file was 104 pages in length. There was no problem in creating this file, but I did notice the time to create the file grew as I added more and more pages to the document.

One feature that is not included in the suite is the ability to set security on the resulting PDF files. The PDF format allows for security within the file to allow opening or changing the document, printing, and copying from the document among other things. This feature would be a great assest to people distributing invoices, price lists and sensitive data using PDF files. Pdf995 has opted to use Microsoft Cryptographic technologies in their product. This allows you to encrypt your files to 128-bit DES encryption. The documentation states that you can encrypt and/or sign PDF files, Micorosoft office files and ZIP files.

2.) The second among the list is Foxit Reader

Foxit Reader is a free PDF document viewer and printer, with incredible small size (only 2.55 M download size), breezing-fast launch speed and rich feature set. Foxit Reader supports Windows Me/2000/XP/2003/Vista. Its core function is compatible with PDF Standard 1.7.

Normally an Adobe Acrobat reader consumes upto 80 Mbs of disc space and more while foxit reader only consumes 5Mb of disc space. So if you are memory hungry go for this software.

The other advantage that i came across was when i was reading a novel. Every time adobe launches a pdf , it starts from page 1 while foxit reader starts from the page when you left reading. Also in full screen mode continuous view of pages is possible while in adobe acrobat its not which makes you loose track of your reading.

The next post will take into consideration about a free light and a powerful dictionary