STDU Viewer vs Sumatra PDF

STDU Viewer, a program with a name as long and technical as the documents it handles, is the Swiss Army knife of document viewers. You could throw practically any file type at it—PDF, DJVU, ePub, MOBI and even obscure ones like TIFF—and it would smile politely, open it up and offer you a range of tools that would make a librarian blush. Text extraction? Sure. Bookmarks? Of course. A tabbed interface for juggling documents like a pro? Naturally. It's the sort of tool that would look at you expectantly, as if to say, "Come now, surely you have more files for me?"

Sumatra PDF, on the other hand, is the anti-STDU. Where STDU wants to dazzle you with its array of formats and features, Sumatra merely shrugs and says, "I’ll just open your PDF now, quickly, quietly and without drama." It's a minimalist monk in the chaotic world of document viewers—fast, simple and with all the bells and whistles of a monastic vow of silence. No clutter, no unnecessary features, just the basics: search, zoom, navigate, done. It’s perfect for those who find feature overload as appealing as a Vogon poetry reading.

In the great cosmic battle between these two, STDU is the multi-tool for document wranglers with more files than time, while Sumatra PDF is for those who prefer their reading experience as streamlined as a hyperspace bypass. Both have their virtues, but each caters to a vastly different breed of user.

See also: Top 10 PDF Readers