pdf?

I downloaded the AOnewsletter and tried to view it in microsoft word. That didn't work so here's my question: What is a pdf and what program do I need to view one?

PDF stands for Portable Document Format. It is a proprietary Adobe format that requires Adobe Acrobat or Acrobat Reader to view it.

Adobe provides Acrobat Reader for free. You can download it here: Acrobat Reader

Hope that helps

Just to add to tonybradley's response. The PDF format is pretty much accepted as an industry standard way of presenting documents on the web. The Adobe Acrobat program can convert almost anything (Word, Excel, Word Perfect, and many more) to the PDF format keeping the original documents formating.

:)

Just wanted to add, adobe tends to really slow down older systems, so if you have one, you may wish to convert it from PDF to something that you have and use, like MS word, I found the software that I use using google.

Thanks everyone

by the way ... is there any other program that I can use to view PDF files besides the one that Adobe is offering?

I know adobe acrobat reader is free ... but i'm asking for another program ... one that doesn't hog the system ...

Well, I don't know about Windows but there are a lot of PDF viewers available for Linux. So I'm sure some of them are cross-platform. So check out http://sourceforge.net and search for pdf.
Cheers,
cgkanchi