Doro PDF Writer

CNET Editors' review

by: CNET staff on April 17, 2012

Adobe isn't for every situation, whether it's hardware (bricks) or software (PDFs). If you need to create PDFs that you can view and use inside of the many free standalone PDF viewers, there's a versatile, compact alternative in the form of printer-based PDF tools such as Doro PDF Writer. Doro adds an additional printer to your system, but instead of connecting to an external device, it formats your documents and saves them as PDFs. You create PDFs simply by selecting Print and choosing Doro from your print menu. Doro PDF Writer is freeware.

Doro PDF Writer installs normally, but it looks like a printer to your system, so you access its options a bit differently, beginning with its basic printer properties in Devices and Printers. Like other printer-based PDF clients, Doro's interface is essentially its print properties dialog. We simply pressed Print on a document, and Doro's tabbed interface appeared. We specified a name for our document and browsed to a destination for saving our PDFs. The General Settings let us add Keywords, Author, and Producer to our documents; specify passwords and 128-bit encryption; and select automatic updates. When we were ready, we pressed Create. Doro created and saved our document and also opened it inside our default PDF viewer, from which we could also save, print, and otherwise handle it normally, including selecting Print, choosing Doro, and resizing and altering the document. Doro also supports multiple interface languages.

Doro PDF Writer creates PDFs quickly and easily from inside any Windows app that can open a printer. It's a great complement to PDF viewers that can't create documents, but it's also well worth having around even if you already have a full-featured PDF program. Unless you have a special requirement (like watermarks), clicking Print and using Doro PDF Writer is almost certainly going to be quicker than opening a big app.