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Adobe isn't for every situation, whether it's hardware (bricks) or software (PDFs). If you need to create PDFs that you can view and use inside of the many free standalone PDF viewers, there's a versatile, compact alternative in the form of printer-based PDF tools such as Doro PDF Writer. Doro adds an additional printer to your system, but instead of connecting to an external device, it formats your documents and saves them as PDFs. You create PDFs simply by selecting Print and choosing Doro from your print menu. Doro PDF Writer is freeware.

Doro PDF Writer installs … Read more

According to The Economist, the average American consumes almost eight 40-foot trees per year in paper. Even if you're not environmentally minded, reducing the amount of paper you consume has many benefits, including saving money and reducing clutter.

To help you get on the path to living a paperless lifestyle, here are six tips to consider:

Switch to paperless billing If you're still getting paper bills in the mail, consider switching to paperless billing. Many companies, banks, and utilities offer paperless billing options. The bills will typically be in PDF format, which you access online. When the new … Read more

The default options for viewing PDF documents in OS X are Apple's built-in rendering technologies available in Safari and Preview; however, there are times when some documents will not display properly in these programs. In these instances, you can use Adobe Reader and its accompanying Web plug-in to usually view these documents with success.

For those who use Adobe's Reader and Acrobat programs, Adobe has issued an update that fixes a couple of security holes in the program that could cause the program to crash and allow arbitrary execution of code. While this reasoning has been regularly issued … Read more

When we reviewed Tomahawk Gold from NativeWinds, we found it to be a very good integrated PDF and word processing program: fast, light, and portable, yet ready for business. Tomahawk PDF+ ("PDF Plus") is a freeware version of Tomahawk Gold. Some of the premium tool's features are disabled in PDF+. For example, it can create PDFs and convert documents to PDF, but it can't open PDFs created by some other programs, including Adobe PDFs. However, it can extract data from many of those documents with its PDF Extractor and Image Manager.

PDF+'s user interface is … Read more

Whether you need to scan a document for signatures or you're prepping for tax season, this app is extremely useful.

There have been many attempts at document scanners on the Android Market. Most of the time these apps will utilize your camera and turn pictures you take into JPEGs or PDFs. Unfortunately, it's really difficult to take pictures of proportional rectangles in real life and have them look the same on your phone. 

That's why HandyScanner is so useful; it corrects the common issues with taking photos of documents, and even allows you to … Read more

Converting JPEGs to PDFs is one of those sort-of-everyday tasks that you really don't think about until it's time to do it, and then you look for a tool to do the job; preferably freeware and easy to use, too. But suppose this is a frequent task, something you do often and in large batches? Same answer: easy is good, and free is better. HiHiSoft's JPG to PDF is the sort of tool that can cover all bases. This standalone freeware converts single images or batches of files and folders to PDFs without requiring Acrobat or other … Read more

For any iPad owner who's seen those spiffy-looking magazines and newspapers on Amazon's Kindle Fire tablet and thought, "Hey, why don't my magazines and newspapers look this spiffy?", here's good news: Amazon just rolled out a Kindle app update that adds rich magazine and newspaper viewing to the iPad, among other things.

Kindle 2.9 for iOS offers several appreciable changes, and not just for the iPad. For example, iPhone and iPod Touch users will also notice a new scrolling menu atop their library; it lets you sort your view between books, magazines, and documents.… Read more

Visually comparing PDFs to identify changes or differences is harder than it sounds, and it sounds hard enough, not to mention extremely boring. But it's all too easy to miss subtle differences with the Mark I Eyeball, and some changes might not be visible at all. Why put yourself through it when there's a free tool that can do the job for you, only much faster and more thoroughly? It's called DiffPDF, and it's from RubyPDF Technologies. With dual file selection tools and display panes, this efficient tool makes quick work of a tedious but necessary … Read more

If you need to print in black and white in OS X, you can, but it may not be obvious how to do it.

Apple used to include an obvious setting in its print dialog boxes for color or black and white, but in OS X this has disappeared since these options are now handled by the specific driver for your printer.

You can certainly still print in grayscale and there are various ways to do it, although some of these options might be a bit obscure, may only be available on some systems, or might require a few extra steps.… Read more