Comments on: What's a good and cheap way to print to PDFs in Windows XP?

Question: What's a good and cheap way to print to PDFs in Windows XP?

Mercaptan — Wed, 21 Sep 2005 12:24:26 -0800

What's a good and cheap way to print to PDFs in Windows XP?

I'm sure Adobe has an expensive option available, but I'm working on a limited budget and would like to do this on the cheap. I've googled up a few different apps, but I don't really know one from another. OS X with it's "Print to PDF" everywhere has severely spoiled me, and I'd like something similar.

By: letterneversent

letterneversent — Wed, 21 Sep 2005 12:26:03 -0800

PrimoPDF

By: trey

trey — Wed, 21 Sep 2005 12:26:46 -0800

CutePDF

By: SteveInMaine

SteveInMaine — Wed, 21 Sep 2005 12:27:17 -0800

CutePDF.

By: SteveInMaine

SteveInMaine — Wed, 21 Sep 2005 12:28:25 -0800

Jinx.

By: Goblindegook

Goblindegook — Wed, 21 Sep 2005 12:33:16 -0800

PDFCreator. (What's with these people and not using spaces?)

By: russilwvong

russilwvong — Wed, 21 Sep 2005 12:41:07 -0800

(What's with these people and not using spaces?)

Makes it easier to find them on Google.

By: misterbrandt

misterbrandt — Wed, 21 Sep 2005 13:54:21 -0800

PDF995. There is a free version, but it's nagware IIRC, so paying $10 (i think) for a license is probably worth it.

By: cosmicbandito

cosmicbandito — Wed, 21 Sep 2005 13:56:33 -0800

Ghostscript and Ghostview. the only one you'll ever need. Postscript to pdf, pdf to postscript, PDF to JPEG, TIFF ,etc. All free.

By: unixrat

unixrat — Wed, 21 Sep 2005 14:12:16 -0800

A second for PDFCreator.

By: prostyle

prostyle — Wed, 21 Sep 2005 14:19:45 -0800

Can't you just "Print to PDF" assuming you've installed a basic version of Reader with the print driver? I've never had a problem with it, although it's not nearly as flexible/powerful as distilling postscript. Great for little documents or instruction sheets though.

By: zsazsa

zsazsa — Wed, 21 Sep 2005 14:45:19 -0800

prostyle, Reader has no "print to PDF" functionality that I know of.

By: cowmix

cowmix — Wed, 21 Sep 2005 14:56:00 -0800

PDFCreator.. buggy.. buggy.. buggy..

PDF995.. works great.. but the nagware is a drag..

PS -> Ghostscript/Ghostview.. works great.. the multistep print process is a hassel..

If work most of the time in OpenOffice.. it has a great PDF export function.

By: QIbHom

QIbHom — Wed, 21 Sep 2005 15:06:18 -0800

I use OpenOffice unless whatever I'm printing has lots and lots of graphics. When that isn't happy, I use PDFCreator. As a last resort, I'll use the Adobe software, which doesn't work most of the time, anyway.

Funny how the free stuff works, and the expensive propriatary stuff doesn't...

By: scottfi

scottfi — Wed, 21 Sep 2005 15:56:19 -0800

Leo Laporte actually answered this question on his radio program a few weeks ago, and listed a good number of them in the show notes.

By: krisjohn

krisjohn — Wed, 21 Sep 2005 19:06:41 -0800

Another vote for CutePDF.

By: exhilaration

exhilaration — Thu, 22 Sep 2005 12:44:08 -0800

For those suggesting Ghostview, you should know that CutePDF just repackages Ghostview in a super-convenient print driver.