Adobe Acrobat Writer Replacement

[Alan Gertner]

If you plan on buying the Adobe Acrobat Writer in the future, you might consider the FinePrint pdfFactory Pro/fineprint combo. They have more functionality and the price is under $100.

I've run pdf write tests with appraisal sw and also printing multi page output with fineprint. I especially like the multi page per sheet of paper
output format. They work fine so far.

More info at www.fineprint.com.

 

[KD247]

There are also two or three free pdf writers that apparently work well.

 

[xmrdfghap]

pdfMachine from http://www.broadgun.com is a good pdf program for $50.00 download and pay on line, when I first got it I had trouble printing from it to my printer. E-mailed them, and when I got up in the morning they told me what I was doing wrong. Turned out the printer needed to be set to postscript level one. No problems since.

 

[Cliff Salisbury]

This sounds good. What do the people that you send the PDF file to use to read the file?

 

[Ben Vukicevich SRA]

Cliff,

They use the free Adobe Reader program. It's a great plot. They give the Reader away for free at www.adobe.com. You have to buy the Writer so they can read it for free.

There is a way to get free PDF Writer, although I don't know how it can be done. Ages ago there was an email program called Posta which I downloaded for free off CNET. It's no longer there but if you installed the demo for Posta and even if you never used it, Posta installed PDF Writer for free. A big blunder by Tumbleweed software and Adobe. I still have the Posta setup file. It's around 3 megs. I don't know how to make it available to anyone or if it is still legal to do so.

Ben

 

[Robert Dunkle]

Greg,

Does that mean that our clients may have to change their printers to print out our e-mails, or is that the case with any pdf software?

Bob Dunkle

 

[xmrdfghap]

Hey Robert, its been a while :lol: ......the only time I have had any problems with it is when I print at kinkos. But if you do that much, you can always use kinkos own print driver that converts to pdf after you have it printed.

But when I use it at home/office etc, I have never had any problems. My home printer is an Epson, and I will use HP's and NEC's when I am in town. None of them have a problem.....but I know that some people use highspeed HP's or Mita's for their printing and if they do, they may hvae more than one postscript level.

 

[jim farrelly]

fineprint pdf factory has a free trial download. it's free and easy to use. i think i downloaded it about a year ago and have never had a problem

 

[Alan Gertner]

I've been testing the fineprint pdfFactory Pro pdf writer for the last month. In general, it works well and produces files that are as small
or smaller than the Adobe Acrobat Writer.

I have identified one problem with fineprint pdfFactory Pro.
When printing an FPS88 Statement of Limitations form, the "Definition of Market Value" section at the top of the form was a little fuzzy. The rest
of the report was fine. I tried to resolve this with the FPS88 and fineprint staff, but was unable to do so. The final explanation from FPS88 was:

"The Homeputer® software handles all of the forms the same and does print them correctly. It is the pdfFactory driver that is not interpreting the printout like a standard printer driver or the Acrobat PDF Writer. I printed your PDF file to a laser printer. A background shading was added to all of the forms, i.e. URAR, Certification, etc. The Homeputer® forms do not have a background shading. The Homeputer® forms print perfectly to a standard printer or to the Adobe Acrobat PDF Writer. It is up to the pdfFactory developers to take another look at the way the pdfFactory software handles the monochrome bitmaps and compression. I believe the pdfFactory software is converting 1 bit monochrome images to another image type which is causing the shading. "

The bottom line is I could not clear up the fuzzy lines and was unable to obtain a patch or commitment to fix the problem. fineprint did offer to provide a refund if I want. I haven't made a decision yet.

I'm finishing my appraisal sw package evaluations, will probably post a summary report in the near future.

 

[Alan Gertner]

I finally tracked down the pdf fuzzy char problem.

It was a printer driver problem. I downloaded the most recent
printer driver from the HP web site and the problem went away.