Strangely, despite my many years of Web surfing, always on the lookout for software that will improve my productivity, it was only last week that I came across yet another PDF viewer, and I'm already convinced is an even better one. It's a free product from Tracker Software called PDF-XChange Viewer.

Both Tracker Software and Foxit Software have a range of products for editing and manipulating PDF documents, very modestly-priced in comparison with Adobe Systems' range. But here, I'm once again restricting my comments to only the reading of PDF documents (which after all is the only thing that the great bulk of us do, most of the time).

As you'll see from that story of mine about Foxit Reader, I reckon that any serious knowledge worker I consider that any modern PDF viewer — free, or otherwise — absolutely must have a tabbed document interface.

I look at dozens and dozens of PDF files every week, and want to recall some of them fairly frequently. If you're a user who only occasionally reads PDF documents, most of what I have to say here is not so pertinent. Adobe Reader may still be good enough for your purposes, even if it is a far bigger download (bloated is another way of putting it, loaded with features that lots of its users don't need, I'm pretty sure).

Both the free Foxit and PDF-XChange viewers do have this feature but, incredibly, in the case of Adobe Reader only the expensive retail version does. Also, the free Adobe Reader "remembers" up to the last 10 PDF files that you've viewed (actually, the default is 5 files, you have to configure it to remember 10).

The same goes for Foxit Reader, no more than 10 file names are remembered.

But as you'll see from the adjacent illustration (click on the adjacent thumbnail for a larger image in a new window) you can edit your PDF-XChange preferences so that it will rememb more than 10 files names (I've set it to remember up to 60 names, which should do me for the moment).

The green arrow shows where the other products would cut out (at a maximum of 10 recent files).

The red circle shows a nifty additional feature. You can optionally "pin" items in the recent files list that you're particularly interested in, so that they don't drop off the end of the list if you open more files than the maximum number of files that you've configured. ... Grouse!

Great work by Tracker Software. So, why not download a free copy of PDF-XChange Viewer and see if you like it as much as I do?