[cmillette]

My company is researching a PDF solution for board meetings to reduce paper consumption. We have been looking at the Ipda 2 because of goodreader. Does the playbook have an app that is similar? I would prefer to support Blabckerry over Al=pple but the function has to be there first. Any comments welcome.

[gregorylkelly]

Adobe Reader comes stock on the PlayBook.

[chasvs]

Adobe Reader comes stock on the PlayBook.

Yeah, Do people not know that or what?

[chiefbroski]

Adobe PDF viewer comes with every Playbook. It's a pretty good pdf viewer, I use it to read scientific papers and review articles and its great. A few things that could make it better though.

1) pinching to zoom works great when zooming in, but it's a little slow when zooming out. The rest of the page always needs to be re-rendered when zooming out (takes 0.5 seconds) . It would be more pleasant to use if it didn't need to do this, although its a very minor point.

2) Having a view of all the pages as tiles would be nice.

Other than that, its a good program that's solid and works. There should be updates and/or equivalent PDF applications for the Playbook in the future.

To answer your question, the function is there, it's from adobe and it's free with the playbook.

I would say your decision is probably based on if you need portability or a larger screen to view the pdfs.

[joefri]

The included PDF Viewer is lacking. I think Adobe put zero effort into this viewer.

1. No bookmarks
2. No search function
3. Does not support every pdf format ie. PDF portfolios created by AutoCAD pdf driver.
4. Some have reported that it does not support very large pdfs. I have not had issues with this.

Adobe or some other developer needs to come up with a full featured pdf viewer in order for this to be used professionally. Right now it's just getting me by until something better comes out.

The amount of game and garbage apps that are coming out is embarrassing for a tablet that was coined with the term as being the "professional" tablet. You think RIM would have targeted professional apps in more earnest than the useless apps that are coming out. I only see maybe a handful that are usefull in a professional environment.

[cmillette]

Thanks, does it have FTP, or some form of secure FTP capability?

[cmillette]

Chasvs. I don't own one yet, so no, I didn't know.

[robsteve]

Thanks, does it have FTP, or some form of secure FTP capability?

Ftp works in the browser but has a couple limitations. I haven't checked it lately, so this may have changed.

If you need to login, the browser defaults to anonymous, so you cannot log in if anonymous is enabled on the server. If Anonymous is not enabled, it will prompt for a username and password. If you transfer files as a logged in user, they are transferred to the downloads folder of the Playbook and then deleted when the session is closed. If if you keep the browser open you cannot do anything with them, as there seems to be no file association for them when clicked on in the dowloads window of the browser. It may be something that hasn't been worked out yet in software.

Logged in as anonymous, the files transfer and the associated applications on the Playbook can see them and open them.

Robert

[blackranger3d]

Dude I have a pb and and iPad. There is nothing on the pb that comes anywhere close to what goodreader does. With all the benefits good reader is what keeps me using the pad for work stuff.

[3Athlete]

Lacking the ability to view all the pages is okay I would say. Some documents are far too large and it would be bothersome. One feature I do like about it is the scroll bar at the bottom allowing you to move quickly through the document if it has many pages and you know where you need to be. I think this negates the need to see all the pages.

[XPEH]

I like my PlayBook but the included Adobe Reader is just awful in comparison with goodreader. That's one app I really wanna see on the PB. Adobe needs to step their game up. A better pdf app is an absolute must to market PB as the business-oriented device.

[bob_tn]

The included Adobe Reader has been working fine for me. But an update can't come soon enough to provide folders, search and goto page. Same for the docs to go Excel, Word and PPT. Searching, I haven't seen this addressed. Point me to the post if it has. RIM owns DataViz? DataViz has PDF readers for the other OS's. I use it on my BB phone, works fine. Why not have it for the PB?? Plus the "Documents to Go Files" that lets me search for files, set up folders, rename...

Having product manuals and other PDF documents at the tip of my finger was one of the main reasons for getting a tablet. And I love my PB. I also think the PB partially is now, and definitely will be a great business tool in the future.
Just can't figure out some of the decisions that were made.

[trsbbs]

Dude I have a pb and and iPad. There is nothing on the pb that comes anywhere close to what goodreader does. With all the benefits good reader is what keeps me using the pad for work stuff.

Good, go away..

Tim

[belsunce]

Good, go away..

Tim

sadly, he was right though.. goodreader absolutely DESTROYS the PB's pdf reader. DESTROYS.

[denialman]

I agree with that too. It's unacceptable not to include mark ups/ comments.

[FF22]

It is unacceptable to be missing a search/find function and a goto page number function. Yup - more than willing to page through my Nikon camera's manual one page at a time to find what I'm looking for - someone has to be kidding.

[patrickylau]

Highlighting feature is very important if we want to replace papers with pdf files in pb.

[semicoln]

As much as I hate to say it the Adobe Reader on the Playbook is garbage. This is one of the reasons I bought the playbook, for reading PDFs. I figured "its a real Adobe reader, can't be that bad"... big mistake. When I saw how basic it was I thought "well it will be updated soon"... nope.

[blackranger3d]

Good, go away..

Tim

You sir are a tool.

I will not go away.

The adobe app should be the gold standard that all other PDF viewers are compared to. Unfortunatly it is garbage for anything other than basic viewing.

[IndubitablyMe]

Another issue to note is that Adobe Reader has problems with large pdf files. If you have anything that's several hundred pages long, it will show the first few pages and the rest will all be blank. The other complaints have already been stated previously in the thread: no bookmarks, search, etc.

I'm very happy with my PlayBook, and would recommend it to most people, but if you're looking solely for PDF functionality then I'd suggest looking elsewhere. Give it a year (or even less, probably) and I'm sure it will be top-notch. RIM will lose a lot of business with their professional clients if it isn't.

[3Athlete]

I personally have not experienced these difficulties with the reader. I have had the entire CRC Handbook of Chemistry and Physics on the tablet which is thousands of pages and absolutely no display issues. I also had a list of solely the physical constants for organic compounds which is ~500 pages and again no difficulties. Maybe this is a formatting issue with the pdf itself and not the playbook? Maybe I am just getting lucky.

[FF22]

3:

I'd agree that it is probably some formatting issue - personally created or using some obscure feature but most of the folks complaining note that these pdf files show fine on other platforms. So the Adobe Viewer on the pb is a bit intolerant and less forgiving than other pdf reader apps including the Adobe readers on computers.

But I still can't believe you cannot search within a file.

[bobalooski]

Ftp works in the browser but has a couple limitations. I haven't checked it lately, so this may have changed.

If you need to login, the browser defaults to anonymous, so you cannot log in if anonymous is enabled on the server. If Anonymous is not enabled, it will prompt for a username and password. If you transfer files as a logged in user, they are transferred to the downloads folder of the Playbook and then deleted when the session is closed. If if you keep the browser open you cannot do anything with them, as there seems to be no file association for them when clicked on in the dowloads window of the browser. It may be something that hasn't been worked out yet in software.

Logged in as anonymous, the files transfer and the associated applications on the Playbook can see them and open them.

Robert

If you download File Browser, install it, then swipe from top of screen down you will find a FTP function.

[bkurant]

sorry to say it, but adobe for pb is simply terrible.
for all of the reasons already mentioned.

having that scroll bar, which requires additional swipes to even appear is no substitute for search and goto functionality. when i work with pdf documents, i need to go to particular pages, not guess where approx page could/should/would be.

in addition, as you know, not all pdf files created equal and this adobe is really unpredictable and very picky when reading files ...wtf, its adobe after all.

it can read some files, but with others only reads 9 or 10 pages and then gives up and displays blank pages for the rest of the document.

when i called rim support, the level 2 person told me that was because the file was too big (72 pages). which, of course, was non-sense, as this same app had no problem with the next file, which was double the size.

shame on adobe !!!

i called rim support several times and they assured me that rim development team is currently working with adobe to resolve all these issues. sadly, they were not resolved with the latest release, so lets hope the next one will do so.

in the meantime, the support people told me that when people have issues, they should call and let them know. this way, the development team will be made aware of these issues and they just might fix them soon.

[exzibit3]

Yeah the adobe reader is absolute garbage on the PB. GARBAGE.
- I can't scroll from one page to another without a 3 second lag in it or it isn't responsive and I have to swipe a few times. Don't say this is acceptable, it isn't.
- Zooming is slow.
- No search function.
- No highlight function.
- No copy and cut function.
- A lot of checkerboarding and slow rendering when scrolling.

Awful.