Product Reviews

Adobe's portable document format (PDF) is the first multi-purpose document format that has really caught on. If you save a report, manual or brochure as a PDF, nearly every computer user, no matter which operating system they use, can view and print it exactly as it was designed. If you've ever carefully formatted your CV and e-mailed it to someone, only to find that they have a different word processor that has inserted tabs, carriage returns and strange symbols everywhere, you'll know how important this is.

The catch is that while PDFs are easy to read using the free Adobe Reader software, they're not so easy to create unless you own one of the few programs that can export PDF files (such as Serif PagePlus PDF Edition), or you feel like shelling out more than £200 for Adobe Acrobat.

That's where eXPert PDF comes in. It's a simple program that turns normal documents into PDF files. The program acts as a printer driver, but instead of

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outputting to a printer, the document you're 'printing' is turned into a PDF file. The beauty of this is that the program works with just about any Windows software that can print. We tried it with Internet Explorer, a cross-stitch program, a multimedia encyclopedia and both Microsoft Word and Excel. It worked with them all, creating PDFs that opened in Adobe Reader. In the case of Word and Excel, it even adds buttons to the toolbar, so you don't have to go through the process of pretending to print the document and selecting 'Visage eXPert PDF' as the printer. Simply click the Create PDF Document button, pick a filename and the job is done.

This Professional Edition also supports features such as annotations - notes you can paste into pages - and security settings to protect private files. You can add bookmarks to your document using eXPert PDF's viewer, although these are difficult to preview, so you end up having to create a PDF to see if they've worked.

There are a few annoying glitches, though. If you use eXPert PDF's default settings, your PDF may not work in older versions of Acrobat Reader. It also won't have the fonts embedded in it, which means your recipients must have the right fonts on their PC. To make the best PDF it's also important to understand the 'downsampling' options that simplify and compress the file size of pictures. You're left to work this out for yourself.

With better default settings and slightly more hand-holding, this product might have won an award. As it is, it just misses out.