Dumb Little Man found this little tidbit at DWTips that I wanted to pass along. (and offer my own alternative solution as well.)

DW Writes:

Every time you run Adobe Acrobat up to 20 plugins are loaded unnecessarily – most users do not need even a fraction of them!

To disable unneeded plugins and make them optional instead, follow these instructions:

1. Install the latest version of Adobe Acrobat – you can get it here
2. Browse to the plugins folder: C:\Program Files\Adobe\Acrobat 7.0\Reader\plug_ins
3. Create a new folder named Optional
4. Move all files from the plug_ins folder to Optional, except EWH32.api, print*.api, and Search*.api

That’s it! Load any PDF in Adobe Acrobat to see the difference!

That is indeed a great tip – Adobe Acrobat has to be the slowest, most bloated piece of crap software in computing history. There is nothing worse that unknowingly clicking on a link to a PDF file only to have your browser lock up for 15 seconds while it loads up 50 Meg+ Adobe Acrobat.

Better Solution: Get rid of Adobe Acrobat Reader
I’ve been unable to personally try the above tip because my computers all have a strict “No-Adobe-Software” policy in place. Which brings me to my preferred, alternate solution – get rid of Adobe Acrobat. You don’t need it. There is a company out there called Foxit Software that makes a small, free, and fast PDF reader called (you guessed it) Foxit Reader.

The Foxit Reader is under one Megabyte in size (take that Adobe), and it allows you to easily type right into any document and to easily select and copy text. Adobe Acrobat Reader, on the other hand, is over 50 times as large, doesn’t do either of those tasks very well, and it constantly “phones home” to Adobe, which slows things down even more.

So unless your employer forces you to use Adobe, I recommend that you ditch it and go with Foxit. You won’t be sorry that you did.

If you’re interested in my other software recommendations, click here.