Adobe reader alternatives

Hi Experts,

We have been using Adobe reader for viewing PDF in our intranet J2EE web app and we are looking for alternatives because Adobe reader is slow.
Our web app heavily rely on generating PDF, so we are looking for something fast, light with some decent features.
If any of you have used some alternatives for Adobe reader and happy about it, let me know.
Open source would be ideal, but I don't mind licensed one if it is excellent.

thanks in advance
dkim18Asked:
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JustInCaseCommented:
Sumatra, Foxit, Nitro, PDF zilla

Side note: On many windows 7 & 8 hosts I found that adobe reader even after closing gets 100% CPU, while Adobe reader DC don't have such issue.
gurpsbassiCommented:
Are you sure the problem is with your reader or your pdf generation process?
dkim18Author Commented:
>>Are you sure the problem is with your reader or your pdf generation process?
Our web app collects user inputs and creates JAXB model that used to produce XML documents and XSLT stylesheet that we use to convert the XML (JAXB model) to HTML.
We use apache tomcat in linux box and the length of PDF is 3 - 20 pages usually.
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dkim18Author Commented:
and our official web-browser is IE and most users run Windows OS.
gurpsbassiCommented:
and XSLT stylesheet that we use to convert the XML (JAXB model) to HTML.

So where does PDF fit into it? you've stated HTML.
dkim18Author Commented:
sorry, most of the time, we create xml file and store network drive and generate PDF from xml and we use iframe to display PDF.
gurpsbassiCommented:
I worked extensively on a system in the past that used Apache FOP to produce PDF's from XML and XSLT.
I know the generation is very slow. So we switched all our reports to be HTML resulting in a huge performance increase.

However it seems from what you've said is that you generate the PDF and store it on disk. So the performance bottle neck is the reader trying to read it into memory?

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dkim18Author Commented:
Predrag Jovic,

How would you compare those with this?

http://www.jqueryrain.com/2012/09/best-jquery-pdf-viewer-plugin-examples/
dkim18Author Commented:
gurpsbassi,

So we switched all our reports to be HTML resulting in a huge performance increase.

How did you handle layout and hard copy print consistency?
gurpsbassiCommented:
Obviously it was not as well layed out and formatted as PDF. But it was good. Good html and CSS.

We also provided a link if the user still wants to download as PDF.
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