Expert: Scottgem - 11/18/2008

Question
I just read the Wikipedia article on PDF without learning what it is, how to use it, why anyone would use it, or what it is supposed to do. Is this program worth keeping on my hard drive?

Answer
I just took a look at that article and I can see where it might be a little confusing.

Think of it this way. If someone sent you an Excel Spreadsheet, you would not be able to open or view that file unless you had a copy of Excel installed on your system. The concept behind PDFs is to allow anyone with the freely distributed reader to view any file regardless of its original format.

So yes the Adobe Acrobat Reader is well worth keeping on your hard drive because there are a lot of people exchanging documents in the PDF format. You will find a lot of WEB pages linking to content in PDF format. Lots of people converting documents to PDF so they know that the recipients will be able to view them. E-mailing PDF attachments is rapidly replacing faxing.

Hope this helps
Scott<>