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Can Vista display PDFs out of the box?

nagromme

nagromme

macrumors G5
Original poster
Do you still need Acrobat Reader with Vista, or is PDF viewing built-in like with Macs?

(What about PDF creation?)

I know most PC makers bundle Reader anyway, but I'm trying to be sure what a bundle-less PC with just Vista can do with PDFs.

TIA
 
Nope, it asks you to look on-line for a program to open it, then brings you to a Adobe Acrobat download page..
 
Thanks. I'm writing some instructions for Windows users and hoped I could skip the "requires Adobe Reader" line.
 
apfhex said:
Sadly, no. You'd think they could have at least gotten that done by now.
Click to expand...

As I understand it, it was commercial wrangling and not a technical obstacle. Some betas of Vista had it. But Microsoft did nonetheless dig this hole for themselves, particularly with the whole metro thing.... 🙄™
 
M$ will be sued to broke if they bundle too many stuff. Firefox under windows doesn't contain flash neither.

To creat PDFs, under windows, only free stuff I know is Openoffice, which can export files to PDFs. the printing to PDF is one of the best features OSX has over windows.

Also, Firefox under windows is switching to Cairo, one of the features of cairo is drawing to PDF, so its possible firefox 3.0 will be able to save webpage into PDFs under windows.
 
Why doesn't MS just bundle Acrobat Reader and Flash with the OS? Doesn't Apple? (well Flash not Acrobat reader 😉 )
 
CaptainHaddock said:
This whole thread deserves a big "ha ha" and a picture of Nelson.
Click to expand...
157479377_00b53b6c37_m.jpg


mkrishnan said:
As I understand it, it was commercial wrangling and not a technical obstacle.
Click to expand...
What do you mean by "commercial wrangling"?

Apple did it, dunno why MS can't?
 
Maybe MS was trying to push their own replacement for PDF? I can see Adobe would withhold cooperation in that case.

But it's hard to imagine Adobe stopping Microsoft from including PDF support--Adobe WANTS their format to stay strong and be easier to use, and Reader is free anyway. Ditto for Flash player.

And it's hard to imagine the law requiring MS NOT to bundle 3rd-party compatiblity. (The law might require the reverse sometimes.) But the law often surprises me 🙂

So it does seem likely that MS is intentionally not supporting the standard. But who knows--I'm curious myself.
 
Microsoft and Adobe couldn't come to an agreement, and Adobe threatened to sue. Microsoft had to remove built-in PDF support from both Vista and Office 2007. However, Microsoft does offer a "save as PDF/XPS" feature download for Office 2007.

The rumor is Adobe wanted Adobe Reader bundled to off-set Vista's system-wide XPS service (smilar to Mac OS X's PDF service), which Microsoft built.

http://news.com.com/2100-1012_3-6079519.html
 
jaw04005 said:
Microsoft and Adobe couldn't come to an agreement, and Adobe threatened to sue. Microsoft had to remove built-in PDF support from both Vista and Office 2007. However, Microsoft does offer a "save as PDF/XPS" feature download for Office 2007.

The rumor is Adobe wanted Adobe Reader bundled to off-set Vista's system-wide XPS service (smilar to Mac OS X's PDF service), which Microsoft built.

http://news.com.com/2100-1012_3-6079519.html
Click to expand...
now thats what I called "fact" and thanks for the info, 1000000 times better than blindly bashing.

and yes, users can download adobe reader 8 for free. Adobe would be bury itself if it doesn't provide windows a free pdf reader.

And yes, M$ and adobe are in direct competition, while apple is not.
 
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