Low-cost Alternative to Adobe Acrobat for PDF Creation/editing

PDF..the Portable Document Format is associated with Adobe Acrobat, and rightfully so, since they are the ones who developed it. It is a powerful tool that allows almost universal ability to read and view documents, regardless of the program that was used to produce the original material. This is the main reason that many forms, applications, and other documents are made available for download in the pdf format. The utility to open and view the documents, Acrobat Reader, (currently at version 7.05 and counting), is available free from the Adobe site. The newest version even comes with an enhanced ability to make comments or notes on a document and save the result, provided that the originator enabled that function.





What if you want to do more than just read the document? What if you want to delete a few items or pages, or add a few?  Or make even more involved changes? What if you want to create your own PDF's? You can do all this and much more too if you want to purchase the full Acrobat program. Have you got $299.00 + Tax (standard edition) or $449.00 +Tax (Pro edition) in loose change in your pocket that you just feel a need to get rid of? (Well, you could always send it to this author!) That's what the full editions will likely set you back. I have the current edition (Pro) on my computer and it can do a lot of things very well, but I only added it recently because I got a great deal on it from a friend. Before I got Acrobat, I did an exhaustive search for alternatives (free or low-cost alternatives) to the pricey Acrobat suite. I found many offerings at free download sites-most of these were a 30-day free-trial (shareware), and some were offered totally free. Most of the programs I tried did an adequate job of creating PDF documents; the differences came in what extras they could do.