This morning I opened my Thunderbird to find an alarming comment on the Adobe Acrobat vs Foxit Reader article. UHammerIT wrote:
Capitalism Killed The FOXit reader
And yet another one bites the dust.
Foxit Reader is no longer a free product. O yeah, sure you can get a one year license for free if you buy something else (where they get 50% commission on the sales). Wonderful. I hardly blame them, they are developers and need money, but at least they could make their 2.0 version open source and continue with their commercial pro line.
This truly and utterly sucks, as pre 2.0 versions do not understand the Firefox plugin concept.
My first thoughts were here we go again, first FastStone and now Foxit. But I got to thinking, I had just read an extensive review (Foxit 2.3 PDF Reader Includes Tabs) over at CyberNet News earlier this week and don’t recall them mentioning anything about the reader no longer being free. I went back and re-read the article, again didn’t see anything about having to pay for Foxit.
So next was over to the official Foxit site. Once there my heart sank after I clicked the button Get it for free! I saw what UHammerIT was talking about when the new window opened. Yes, you can get it for free if you jump through a few flaming hoops over a tank full of hungry sharks. You would have to either end up buying a subscription (DiSH, TiVO, Blockbuster, NetFlix), giving away your personal information (Discover Card) or signing your life away to the devil (AOL). This is not good.
But wait this says Foxit PDF Reader Pro Pack and in the original window it is Foxit Reader 2.3 for Windows. Sounds like two different products to me, but are they trying to pull the wool over our eyes by making us think all there is is this Pro Pack? Apparently the answer is YES! After a closer inspection of the page I noticed a download link (highlighted in the screenshot below) that takes you to a page where you can download the Foxit Reader 2.3 for Windows for FREE (as in no jumping through hoops).
Okay so now I wonder, what exactly is the Pro Pack, besides $39 a year? As near as I can tell it is a bundle that includes Foxit Reader along with some of their other PDF related software. Still really cain’t really tell for sure what all is included in the Pro Pack but it is likely applications that I am not going to use or could get for free somewhere else.
I was able to download, install and use Foxit Reader within Firefox without being required to pay for it or complete one of their offers. I wasn’t too sure though as when I opened a PDF file, Firefox activate the Adobe Acrobat Reader. Turns out all I had to do was re-associate PDF & FDF files with Foxit Reader. I am thinking these settings were changed last week when I upgrade to the newer versions of Adobe Flash. Bottom line is Foxit Reader is still free, provided you click the correct link. Note: the DOWNLOADS link at the top of the page also takes you to the free version of Foxit.