Whether you have a Surface 2 or a Surface Pro 3, getting the best apps on your tablet can really make or break your experience with the device. With over 150,000 apps on the Windows Store, you’ve got lots to choose from.

At under 4 MB for the portable version, Cool PDF Reader is a free PDF reader for Windows that's light on system resources. While Cool PDF Reader may not require much disk space, it's not the best PDF reader available. SlimPDF Reader is by far the smallest free PDF reader in this roundup, occupying just 1.43MB of space, and makes a virtue of its frill-free approach.

We’ve put together our favorite apps for the Microsoft Surface tablet, from image editing to note-taking.

This feature is not available right now. Please try again later. Just like its Adobe Reader for Mac, the mobile app supports Adobe Document Cloud, annotating, digital signatures, text editing, and more. Wanting to take the mobile PDF experience to the next level, Adobe also released the Adobe Scan and Fill & Sign mobile apps.

1. Adobe Photoshop Express

Just like the name, Adobe Photoshop Express is the ideal app for image editing and enhancement while on-the-go. This free app comes with 15 one-touch filters as well as auto brightness and color correction features. Aside from fun photo filters, enjoy all the basic tools you’d find in Adobe Creative Cloud on your tablet.


Image credit: http://apps.microsoft.com

2. Mint

We’ve listed Mint as one of our favorite Android apps and luckily, Mint is on Windows 8.1 as well. As one of the best financial management apps we’ve come across, Mint makes it easy to understand what’s going on with your money while on-the-go. The app pulls in all your personal finance accounts into one place so you can view up-to-date information, check your budgets, and edit transactions right on the app.

Worried about your personal information? The Mint app is password protected, so no one will be able to see how much you spent (or didn’t spend) on those textbooks.


Image credit: http://apps.microsoft.com

3. Microsoft OneNote

We’ve expressed our love for Microsoft OneNote in a previous post so we couldn’t help but mention it as one of our favorite Windows 8 apps. The OneNote app is great for taking notes in class and meetings and making sure it’s synced up with all your other devices. Jot down ideas, keep track of notes, clip from the web, make a to-do list or sketch your ideas, OneNote transforms your tablet into a digital notebook.

Best Pdf Reader For Mac For Note Taking School Worksheets

Students, faculty, and staff can grab Office 365 University which includes the latest Office apps including Microsoft OneNote.


Image credit: http://apps.microsoft.com

4. Drawboard PDF

Designed for Windows 8, Drawboard is the ultimate PDF app for your Surface tablet. The app’s intuitive user interface, stylus and touch separation, and a wide variety of annotation tools makes reading and managing PDFs a breeze. Drawing, highlighting, adding shapes, and text mark-ups can be done with your finger, pen or mouse without having to worry about precision. Designed with both touch and stylus users in mind, this app works well no matter your preference.


Image credit: http://apps.microsoft.com

5. Tweetium

Known as the premium Windows 8 Twitter client, Tweetium is a must-have app for anyone using Twitter on their Surface tablet. We especially like the beautiful landscape flow layout which makes it very easy to read and share information on Twitter. Tweetium comes with two account types: the base price gets you the fully featured standard app with support for one Twitter account while Tweetium Pro enables support for up to 7 accounts, push notifications, integrated news reading, and more.


Image credit: http://apps.microsoft.com

6. Pin More

Get full control over your tablet home screen with Pin More. This free app lets you create custom tiles for documents, folders, and websites. And for the gamers, you can even pin Steam and Origin games. Plus, you can export the tiles you’ve pinned so you can share them, import them onto other devices, or just to create back-ups.


Image credit: http://apps.microsoft.com

7. Hyper for YouTube

Hyper for YouTube is the easiest and probably the most advanced way to watch YouTube videos on your tablet. It touts itself as a “clean, fully featured YouTube applications and downloader”. Watch in 720p or full HD 1080p, get support for multiple YouTube accounts, and our personal favorite, download videos and MP3s for offline viewing.


Image credit: http://apps.microsoft.com

8. Flipboard

As the name suggests, build your own personal magazine to catch up on the news you care about. Simply flip through pages of a personalized magazine based on interests you specify. Flipboard draws its content only from the top news and information sources such as The New York Times, TIME Magazine, Fast Company, BBC, National Geographic, and more. The Windows 8.1 version lets you save stories, search, and share to social networks while its home screen tile displays a thumbnail photo and summary text of top stories waiting for you.


Image credit: http://apps.microsoft.com

9. Khan Academy

Prepare for that upcoming SAT or learn how fire stick farming changed Australia, Khan Academy is the ideal education app for your tablet. Covering a massive variety of topics including biology, chemistry, physics, humanities and finance, it’s goal is to offer “a free world class education for anyone, anywhere”. Browse and watch thousands of videos, download videos to watch offline, and search and share your favorites – all for free.


Image credit: http://apps.microsoft.com

10. Nook

Nook is a free e-reader app and a must-have for anyone who reads on their tablet. It’s well-designed and intuitive interface is what makes it stand out from competitors. The app is equipped with all the font and navigation options you can think of and more including font adjustments, line spacing, margins, theme, etc. Unlike it’s competitor Kindle app, you can browse and buy new magazines and newspaper issues right within the app. Did we mention that Nook offers over 3 million eBooks, most of which are for free?


Image credit: http://apps.microsoft.com

11. Allrecipes

Allrecipes is your new kitchen sidekick and a great app for any student looking to spice up their meals. The free app is a massive library of proven, successful recipes. And if you can’t make up your mind, the app can give you options based on what ingredients you have on hand. Once you select your meal, get step-by-step instructions and nutritional information.


Image credit: http://apps.microsoft.com

Students get Office 2016 for free. See if you qualify by searching for your school.

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Featured photo: Microsoft Brand Central

Adobe's free PDF reader has long been a standard for handling its extremely popular document format, but you aren't limited to using it to view your PDF files. Let's take a look at five of the most popular PDF readers.

Original image by iowa spirit walker.

Last week we asked you to share your favorite PDF reader, and now we're back to share the results.

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Best PDF Reader?

PDFs have become quite a mainstay in the document world, with a plethora of readers having cropped…

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A note about pricing: Every basic package offered by the companies included in today's Hive is free. Among those offering paid upgrades, we selected the upgrade directly above the basic package for our price inclusion. Make sure to check out the company sites for additional information and to see which, if any, of the upgrades is necessary for your needs.

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The test document we used is the D*I*Y Planner 3.0 Handbook, an excellent resource of organization-related printouts.

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Sumatra PDF (Windows, Free)

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Sumatra PDF is an ultra-lightweight and open-source portable application. The emphasis with Sumatra PDF is not on the number of features and the wide-ranging abilities of the application, but instead on speed. It loads almost instantly, renders pages extremely quickly, and thanks to a huge number of keyboard shortcuts, you can zip through nearly any document with ease. Sumatra PDF, thanks to a lack of frills and extraneous features, is a great candidate for a portable drive or for in-browser use for someone who wants quick-loading PDF files without the lag caused by features they won't ever use.

Preview (Mac, Free)

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Preview is Apple's free PDF viewer, built into OS X. It's no mystery many Mac users have no need to step beyond the built-in tool. Preview has quite a few features often only found in commercial PDF software, like the ability to drag and drop pages between documents, page extraction, encryption, and text annotation. In addition to viewing PDF files, Preview can display over two dozen other file formats, making it quite a versatile little viewer.

Foxit (Windows/Linux, Basic: Free/Pro Pack: $39.99)

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Foxit is a polished Acrobat-alternative that, on top of cleanly displaying PDF files with a minimal interface, also has a host of handy features—all packed into a lightweight 6MB package. Foxit loads immediately, without any splash page or lag from plug-ins loading. Reading PDFs is just as snappy, and in-text pictures and charts render quickly. When filling out PDF forms, you can save your progress in the form and return later to finish filling it out. While both the free and the Pro version allow you to annotate text, insert graphics and drawings, and insert links, the free version adds a Foxit stamp on each page you annotate; the pro version removes the marking. Foxit is available as a portable application.

Adobe Acrobat (Windows/Mac/Linux, Basic: Free/Pro: $299)

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Adobe Reader is Adobe's default offering for viewing PDFs. Acrobat enjoys widespread popularity as a result of being offered by the company that created the PDF. For light PDF users, it's a more than adequate tool, although frequent users may seek to try a lighter alternative to get rid of the long load times and the lag that can occur when Acrobat loads within a web browser pane. You can attach sticky notes to pages and highlight text for your own review. More advanced features, like PDF creation, saving PDFs in other formats, and the ability to merge PDF files, are only available with an upgrade to Acrobat Standard for $299.

PDF-XChange (Windows, Basic: Free/Pro: $34)

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PDF-XChange is another Adobe-alternative in today's Hive that boasts snappy load times and basic functionality that outpaces the basic functionality of Adobe Reader. With PDF-XChange you can open and browse PDF documents, perform simple page annotations with drawings and text, and type outside of preset form boxes by using the PDF-XChange typewriter tool to place text wherever you want. Advanced features like reorganizing pages and text extraction are only available with the Pro upgrade. PDF-Xchange is available as a portable application.

Now that you've had a chance to look over the candidates—and hopefully get a chance to test them out, since so many are conveniently portable!—it's time to cast your vote in the poll below:

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Which PDF Viewer is Best?(survey software)

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Love a PDF application that didn't make the cut? Have a trick for making Adobe Acrobat load faster? Share your PDF tips and tricks in the comments.

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