We've never been fans of Adobe's bloated and risky Reader for viewing PDFs. If you want to examine and edit PDFs, Australian-developed Nitro Reader remains our favourite. Version 3.5 of the free Reader product adds support for reading XML Forms Architecture (XFA) documents and incorporates various performance fixes, while the full-blown Nitro Pro package jumps to version 8.5 and adds the ability to convert files into PowerPoint format.

Australian-developed Nitro Reader 3 remains our favourite tool for working with PDFs: it's free, it lets you edit and sign PDF files, and it works far better and less intrusively than Adobe's Reader. Version 3 has just been released and adds several cool features, including auto-saving when you edit files and smart alignment of text when you are filling in scanned forms.

Not because it would be productive or wise. Just because troubleshooting printers is often painful and tedious and wanton destruction can seem like the best option.

We're big fans of free software generally, but the question often arises: how do companies that build free tools professionally make any money? At a press event today, Nitro PDF (the Aussie company which makes our favourite free PDF reader and editor) shared some figures which provide an insight into how the 'freemium' approach works.