How To: Optimize Adobe Reader 7.0

Microsoft's Jonathan Hardwick has some tips tips on his MSDN blog on how to speed up your install of the new Adobe Reader 7.0 so it loads faster. His advice:

1. In Edit-Preferences, do the following:
• General tab: turn off “Automatically save document changes”
• Internet tab: turn off all three checkboxes
• Page Display tab: turn on “CoolType”
• Search tab: turn off “Enable fast find”
• Startup tab: turn off “Show messages and automatically update”
2. In View-Toolbars, turn off “Rotate view” and “Search the internet”. Under “Show button labels”, turn them all on so you can figure out what the heck those icons means.
3. Fire up Windows Explorer and do the following:
• Navigate to C:\Program Files\Adobe\Acrobat 7.0\Reader\
• Right-click to create a new subdirectory, and call it plugins_uninstalled
• Move all the .api files from the plug_ins subdirectory to your new plugins_uninstalled subdirectory, except for AcroForm.api (for form-filling) and EScript.api (dependency of AcroForm.api).
4. Finally, go to Start-Run-All Programs-Startup, and right-click and delete the “Adobe Reader Speed Launch” link that Adobe silently added to your startup process.

Of course, many of these changes will cause you to lose some functionality, so check to see if you need any of them. Still, getting rid of many of these extraneous features should do more good than harm if all you want to do is read PDFs.