Top Choices for November 2009...   VIPRE Antispyware+Antivirus — 15 day free trial   Sunbelt Personal Firewall — 30 day free trial   NetZero Dialup — Free 10 hrs /month   Web Hosting from $4.95/month   Windows XP System Repairs — Online Service

Create PDF Files Easily with Click2PDF

Program:   Click2PDF
Publisher:  Blue Squirrel
Category:  Utility - pseudo-printer to create Adobe Reader (.pdf) files
License:  Commercial Product, $19.95, 15 day free trial

I have been using Click2PDF for a couple years to create .pdf files easily from my computer. What's a .pdf file? It is a file in the Portable Document Format created by Adobe. Using the free Adobe Reader for Windows, Mac, Linux, Unix and other operating systems, almost any computer user can view a PDF file exactly as you created it -- without having to have your favorite word processor, your fonts or anything else but Adobe Reader.

No longer do you have to worry about sending a file that someone else may not be able to read. Almost every computer comes with Adobe Reader already installed, in today's world, because manufacturers' are providing their documentation in .pdf files, too.

While Adobe offers their full-function Adobe Acrobat program to do create .pdf files (and edit them, too), the program is prohibitively expensive at about $250. Click2PDF is a much more affordable $18.95!

Click2PDF installs in Windows as a fake printer. At that point, you can use it as your "printer" for any program that prints -- and create a .pdf file easily.

One feature of Click2PDF, that I really appreciate, is the ability to print multiple times into the same Click2PDF temporary file. When I buy something over the Internet, I typically use Click2PDf to print a copy of the web page for the item I am buying, print a copy of my shopping cart, print a copy of my finished "invoice" and anything else related to the order.

Click2PDF then allows me to change the order of the individual "prints" (e.g., move the invoice to the first page of the file), to decide not to include one or more documents, to delete individual pages, and then to save the file. Nicely, Click2PDf retains the information until I actually exit the Click2PDF printer -- I frequently add one more page to the file and save it again.

Click2PDF creates what I will call a "image .pdf file." That is, the data in the file is apparently stored as images, rather than as formatted text plus images. This makes sense, when we remember that Click2PDf pretends to be a printer -- like all Windows printers, it handles everything as graphics.

One other neat feature is comes from the ability to route multiple print jobs into one .pdf file. I can print from several different applications into a single .pdf file. For example, I can print from Firefox into Click2PDF and then print from Excel into Click2PDF — and save a single .pdf file that contains both print outputs.

I use Click2PDF to create an electronic document of anything that I would otherwise print. This makes my filing system a whole lot easier to handle -- and makes finding receipts and shareware registration codes a whole lot easier, too.

Copyright © 2005-2006 Terry A. Stockdale. All rights reserved.