Nuance PDF Reader is a free PDF reader that can also edit PDF files, and convert PDF files to different formats – all for Free! Nuance PDF Reader is a very good replacement for Adobe Reader simply because of the small disk space that it takes, and its small memory footprint. However, it makes Adobe Reader look like a thing of past with the interesting Editing features: you can annotate your PDF files, underline and highlight text in them, and convert PDF files to formats like Word, Excel, WordPerfect, and RTF.
I have earlier reviewed 2 good free replacements for Adobe Reader: Foxit Reader and Sumatra PDF Viewer. Both of these are good free PDF readers to replace Adobe Reader on your PC. However, when I found Nuance PDF Reader, I was really impressed with the features.
Let me break down the features of Nuance PDF Reader in terms of PDF Viewing, PDF Editing, and PDF Conversion.
Free PDF Viewer:
Nuance PDF Reader has very good PDF viewing capabilities. You can open PDF file of any type. Nuance PDF Reader can even open PDF based portfolios. Nuance PDF Reader also lets you view commentst that have been saved with the PDF file. While doing all this, Nuance PDF Reader takes very less disk space (less than 50MB), and uses very less RAM as compared to Adobe Reader.
Free PDF Editing Tools:
What I like most about Nuance PDF Reader is its free PDF editing tools. One of the thing I really hate while reading books in PDF format is that I can’t underline or highlight the text that I want to come back later and revise. Nuance PDF Reader provides this functionality. You can underline text in your PDF file, you can highlight text in PDF, and you can cross the text in your PDF. I can’t tell you how badly I wanted these features in a PDF reader. Thanks Nuance PDF Reader.
Nuance PDF Reader also lets you fill and save PDF forms.
Free PDF Converter:
Nuance PDF Reader comes with built-in PDF conversion features. It can convert your PDF files to Word, Excel, WordPerfect, and RTF formats. For doing this conversion, Nuance PDF Reader connects to its own hosted service in the cloud and does the conversion. This is really good, as that means Nuance PDF Reader does not needs to install heavy conversion logic to my PC. Nuance PDF Reader is not be very accurate, but is good enough for casual use. For better convesions, you can try Free Online PDF to Word Converter, and Free Online PDF to Excel Converter.
Nuance PDF Reader is now my favorite Free PDF Reader. Love it!