Review: Nuance PDF Reader

Whether you’re a home user or a small or large business, there’s no escaping the fact that the ubiquitous PDF format is an essential part of modern document distribution. It’s so common and so widely used that it almost seems wrong to have to shell out so much for the full Adobe package, and luckily a range of powerful alternatives are available far more cheaply.

Nuance has now taken things a step further with its new PDF reader, which bundles in a range of popular features and best of all is available for free download.

Nuance PDF Reader allows users to fill in and save PDF forms, create annotations, convert to popular Office formats such as Word, Excel and RTF and convert documents to PDF. It’s also compatible with Microsoft SharePoint and offers support for PDF portfolios and embedded Flash and video files, so depending on your needs this could be a very significant alternative.

Registration is required to access the small, free download and during installation you’re given the option of installing the software with JavaScript turned off to improve security; a handy feature that isn’t available with Acrobat. The software is also noticeably quicker to load and quicker to open PDF files than Adobe’s software, and offers all the typical tools for browsing and viewing large documents.

There are a few hoops to jump through for the privilege of a free download though, and PDF conversion isn’t done locally, rather using a hosted web service to encrypt, upload, convert and deliver to a specified email address. A choice of Word, Excel, RTF and WordPerfect formats are available and it’s also possible to select the language and image quality depending on how the document will be used.

We sent a range of files off for conversion and were pleased to note that the process is very fast and straightforward. At the best image quality setting arrival time at our Inbox ranged from just over 30 seconds for a two-page document with text and images to little over a minute for a 25-page document with a similar mix.

Text and image placement and formatting is very accurate for the most part, and though some tweaks will inevitably be needed to tidy things up, this is true of all packages of this type. Converting to Excel is predictably awkward and unless a file was originally created with a spreadsheet package or adopts a clear cell/grid structure, some major repairs may need to be done, though this will be common knowledge to those who have tried in the past.

Having to convert in this way should be no more than a minor inconvenience then (though it obviously requires an internet connection) and generally we were very pleased by the speed and accuracy of the process. Our only real gripe is with image conversion and we were a little disappointed by sharpness and colour accuracy in most cases, which is noticeably degraded from the original.

In terms of converting documents to PDF, this is strangely not available directly through the software and no virtual printer driver is provided for PDF creation. A Microsoft XPS Document Writer is though, and this can be used as a workaround by 'printing' a document, opening it via the software and saving it back out as a PDF file. It seems a little strange to force this extra step, but at least the option is still available if needed.

Unfortunately the software is also fairly light on editing features, and while it’s possible to view comments, bookmarks, attachments and more, there’s not a great deal of control over building a document other than highlighting text for attention. Nuance PDF Reader is more of an upgrade to Adobe’s free reader than a stripped-down replacement for the full package then, and for some may not offer the desired degree of control.

In being faster and offering some genuinely useful features it’s difficult not to recommend it as a natural replacement and if the advantages on offer tick enough boxes it could potentially save a significant amount of money.

Windows XP (32-bit, SP3), Windows Vista 32-bit/64-bit, SP1, Windows 7 32-bit/64-bit
Internet Explorer 6 or above
256 MB RAM (512 MB recommended)
50 MB of free hard disk space
SVGA monitor with 256 colors and 800x600 resolution