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Developed by Adobe, PDF (Portable Document Format) technology captures formatting information from a number of different desktop publishing applications, making it possible to send these documents and have them appear as the creator originally intended, even if the recipient doesn't have the application they were created on in the first place.

A few days ago a reader posted a question on our message board asking if there was a cheap solution for reading large PDF files on a handheld. The individual would like to carry an 800-odd page PDF file on a SD card and use the document on a mid-range handheld.

How well would this work?

A senior member replied that while file access wouldn't be as fast as with PC, it is fast enough - as long as you have a little patience. While there are many commercial applications out there that enable you to read PDF files, either as part of suite or standalone, you can render these documents on your mobile device for free.

For example, there's PocketXpdf for Pocket PCs and Adobe Reader for the same platform, the Palm OS and Symbian platforms. You can learn more (and download) the former from our free downloads section here. Click here for the Pocket PC version of Adobe Reader, here for the Palm OS edition, and here of you've got an S60-based or Nokia Communicator Symbian-run smartphone.