Help a Newbie Create a RAMDisk

@Callender

Out of interest, I browsed back and found he mentioned Power PDF, so I downloaded a trial copy and installed it (some 600MB of installed files, half of which was spell-check dictionaries). It took about 3s to start on my PC (one can see a lot of elements starting up on its flash screen), regardless of the size or complexity of the pdf file one wants to view. I have had PDF viewers take an age to parse (?) some PDFs, but could not find one to test. It is still slow cf my preferred viewer, Sumatra PDF, which is essentially instantaneous with my NVME drive. I have uninstalled it (Power PDF, that is!).

Update: On re-checking post #1, he mentioned 'Nuance' Power PDF, and I just installed the first 'Power PDF' found in Google, made by Kofax. A further search reveals these are apparently the same thing.

Hi, mngerhold,

I'm one of the guys that wants the best software so I'll try to test every software. I tested Sumatra but it couldn't do certain things that I remember. Nuance built Power PDF Advanced until Kofax bought them about 2 years ago. To be honest, I don't know why Power PDF Advanced didn't take off. Adobe Acrobat was selling for like $400 and this program was selling for $50. It was actually a better PDF editor than Adobe Acrobat. Acrobat looked slightly better aesthetically. I have Acrobat for work and I can tell you that Power PDF isn't perfect but it kicked Acrobat's butt. You can make notes, make comments, insert texts, convert to different formats. You can make buildable forms. Digital security & signature. It's got so many features! (like 10x more than Acrobat) and at such a low price. I really couldn't understand why everyone didn't buy it when it was so cheap. I mean it has a Bates numbering system and legal case file management system. You can create an inbox and Power PDF would transfer files to folders you desired. It's really a crazy, awesome product. I don't use 99% of the feature but still. I think even at its prices now, it's still a steal.

Kofax raised the prices by a lot but I bought Power PDF Advanced 2.1 for $50. It was a robbery. I should have bought one for my 10 year old child who might use it in 5 years!

I think it's a perfect business school case study of how marketing is really essential to sell products. Nobody really knew or heard of Power PDF. I feel bad for the programmers who worked on it. They did a great job.

mngerhold said:

@Callender

Out of interest, I browsed back and found he mentioned Power PDF, so I downloaded a trial copy and installed it (some 600MB of installed files, half of which was spell-check dictionaries). It took about 3s to start on my PC (one can see a lot of elements starting up on its flash screen), regardless of the size or complexity of the pdf file one wants to view. I have had PDF viewers take an age to parse (?) some PDFs, but could not find one to test. It is still slow cf my preferred viewer, Sumatra PDF, which is essentially instantaneous with my NVME drive. I have uninstalled it (Power PDF, that is!).

Update: On re-checking post #1, he mentioned 'Nuance' Power PDF, and I just installed the first 'Power PDF' found in Google, made by Kofax. A further search reveals these are apparently the same thing.

Callender,

Thanks for your helpful advice. I tried OSFMount but I couldn't get it to work automatically. It's free so the developers don't really seem to care. I asked someone at the company a question and he kind of blew me off. OSFMount is really fast. And, it's solidly made. (No glitches.) It's just that the developers didn't finish making it. It appears that they were nearly almost finished completing it and then they suddenly just stopped. It's for free so I guess other priorities came up.

So, the program is perfect except, it won't automatically mount the image at startup or automatically save the image when you shut down. I guess if you leave your computer on all the time, it would be perfect.

So, I'm now trying SoftPerfect. It's not as solidly built as OSFMount and although I haven't tested it, it doesn't seem as fast. And, the GUI glitches a lot which worries me. I wish someone would just finish what OSF almost completed.

Another thing that I learned that you might be able to use is utilizing hard links. I think it's a much better idea than relying on moving the declared location of the installed program to the RAM drive. The reason is that for a complex program like Microsoft Office, if you install it on the R: drive, things may start to not work because Office was programmed to rely on links based on the C: drive. So, I read a much better way to "move" a folder to a RAM drive. You create a hardlink from a folder on the C: drive to the R: drive. Then, you install or paste whatever onto the hardlink and the files will automatically save itself in the designated folder in the RAM drive. But, the computer thinks the entire time it's getting stuff from the C: drive when it's all from the R: drive. Neat, no?

Callender said:

@CerebralFreeze

When using a RAMdisk on Windows 7 I found that the biggest performance gains only came after disabling prefetch and superfetch.

I'm sure that everyone will say "don't do that" but it might be worth experimenting. It would require a reboot.

Assuming that you did actually move TMP and TEMP environment variables.

- - - Updated - - -

Tairiku,

Thanks for the additional info. It's great. I wish that Nuance Power PDF took off 5-10 years ago and they were able to take their program to the next level and improve things like security but I'm assuming they didn't have any funds since they didn't seem to be selling that much. They also made a program called Dragon that was THE best voice recognition software in its time. It was better than Google (which is the leader now) at it many years ago but nobody bought their software except for one customer, me. :)

I'm just curious but can Sumatra and PDF Xchange Editor allow you to quickly add text on fillable lines on a PDF form? Select text and replace the selected text? Can it convert the PDF into a Word formatted document? Create PDF forms? How are the features compared to Adobe, for example?

I'm asking because just in case in a few years when it gets old, I want to know which software I should be changing to.

Also, is security of the signature really something I should be worried about? In the US, digital signature is a valid form of a signature but I don't think most people would just accept the digitally signed PDF as a definitive confirmation of a contract or signing of an important legal document. I think most would approach it like regular signed signatures that could easily be forged. They would try to get double confirmation that a document was really signed by the correct party with a witness. There would have to also be other forms of evidence like emails and security codes, no?

TairikuOkami said:

Sumatra is focused on security. Dev even refuses to add certain features to avoid them being exploited.
I use Sumatra by default, but if I need something more, I pick Foxit Reader or PDF-XChange Editor.