I would like to say a big thankyou to the person(s) that invented the PDF file.
Nowadays you can instantly download just about any product information you require, whereas it used to take a couple of days to get it mailed(via Snailmail).
And it also saves having mountains of catalouges and product brochures filling up your filing cabinet, you can just delete them when you have finished with them!.
So simple, why did we not have this sooner?.

It was pure timing. They've done a good job, but Adobe Systems' success came from being in the right place at the tight time.

Yeah mate,
I like them mainly because of the no paper required, very Environmentally Friendly, I bet the greenies are smiling too!.
Although a few of the bigger ones I have d/loaded, take a while.

Just an update to this thread.
Now that we have software that enables you to write and save your own PDF Files.
It's my choice of file type.
After all, who hasn't got Acrobat Reader on thier computer these days?.

Good idea, in my opinion too. Now I'm learning php from a pdf-file, and I'm happy I don't have to hold the book: I see the instructions on the screen, beside the notepad and if all fails, I still can copy the script from the tutorial.

I guess I am the luddite. I print out most of the PDFs I get. I still like thumbing a book.

Ahhh -- PDF processing software is what I do to earn my crust at the moment :-) Almost any printed literature (magazines, pamphlets, books, newspapers, anything) and most product packaging is via PDF these days. (a few places still use PostScript, but they are few these days). The whole prepress and press workflow (burst, normalise, text trapping, separation, imposition layout) and all the approvals and soft proofs and so on are almost all PDF these days, right up until the final rendering, when the pages are sent to printers plates. It has been even more of a revolution in the printing industry than it has in things like online manuals and books.

At work we ùanufacture big 65-inch poster-sized proofers, and my favourite demo is when they print out a full-sized copy of this:
http://www.stib.irisnet.be/pdfRep/mapBRU_AP.pdf

Of course with a PDF the beauty of it is that one can expand the output size to whatever one wishes without losing quality.

Gee, couldn't they have added some detailed information to that one?