Ever since I discovered there were inexpensive alternatives to Adobe Acrobat (which is costly and not exactly the easiest software to use) I've been on a mission to find the best one. Well, I've found it and in addition to being incredibly easy to use, it is also incredibly FREE.

As you know, the ability to create universally viewable PDF documents is a "must" for any online business professional. There are probably at least a dozen alternatives to Acrobat for creating PDF documents, some good, others not so good. However, I have finally found one that I'm truly excited about. It's called PDF995 and you can download and install it for free, without restriction. This means no "watermarks" inserted within your PDF documents (which is something most other supposedly free PDF creation products do).

Once installed (just takes a couple of minutes) it acts as a print driver. This means you can convert anything you would normally print into a full-color PDF document. For example, I viewed one of Judy McCutchin's listing virtual tours online that let me "print" a flyer on the property. I used PDF995 to create a PDF version of it instead, taking only a few seconds to do it —CLICK HERE to see it.

In my experience I find it much easier to use (and less balky) than Adobe Acrobat. It appears to faithfully reproduce PDF versions of documents from all types of software. Ironically, the only time I had a problem was dropping of certain special fonts when I tried to create a PDF of an Adobe Pagemaker document (this just happened in one particular case and does not appear to be for all Pagemaker documents).

It's fast, friendly (i.e. easy to use), and free. The only catch with the free version is that it will open several advertisement Web pages every time you create a new document with it. If you find this too annoying (and it is), just pay the $9.95 US (hence the name PDF995, and for you cheapskates out there, this is as good as it gets) and the popups go away. Either way, it is probably the best deal you will ever find for easily creating PDF documents!