For years, from a practical point of view and AFAIK, it seems the only (free) way to open a PDF was with Adobe Reader/Acrobat. And that was OK, up to that point But printing a large PDF document invariably led to a myriad of printing problems, failures, crashes, reboots, etc.

Then along came Preview, and it both opened and printed PDFs without issue. And there was joy upon the land…

But now, at least according to some, Adobe has finally gotten their act together and Adobe Reader is as good as, if not (even) better, than Preview.

So what I am looking for, is a subjective (or objective) head-to-head evaluation, feature comparison, etc. of Adobe Reader vs. Preview. Which do you use and why?

Your thoughts, suggestions, and musings most appreciated.

Adobe Reader has more printing conveniences than Preview (look at all the options in the AR Print dialog box) but I recently had a problem with AR 9.1.3. I wanted to print a multi-page document (9 pages) and AR choked on the first page. I haven't had to time to troubleshoot this issue (and AR had had no trouble printing a different document on the same CD) so I opened it in Preview and printed from there (no issues).

If you're doing straightforward printing and don't need the extra options in AR, Preview works faster. Other than this, I don't use either one enough to state anything else.

I have used both and settled on Adobe Reader as my default some time ago.

Objectively: Preview loads faster and Preview can handle most PDFs, but Adobe Reader can handle all PDFs including a few useful advanced features in the latest version of Acrobat that are not in the public domain. One specific case is PDF Portfolios which I use a lot because they are so convenient for bundling several related PDF documents into a single file where they can be viewed or extracted by drag and drop or a couple of keystrokes. Preview only goes to the portfolio splash page and you cannot get beyond that. I have also encountered a few, PDFs that Preview's rendering was not as good as Adobe Reader's and some where Previews Printed output did not accurately reflect what was on screen. It was after dealing with a few of those I settled permanently on Adobe Reader as my default. In my experience, the only PDF file Adobe Reader ever chocked on turned out to be corrupted.

Subjectively: I like Adobe Reader feature set and GUI better than that of Preview but then again I also use Adobe Acrobat 9 so I am more used to that interface which colors my viewpoint.

Note: Adobe Reader is updated fairly frequently and the updates are generally advisable.

Jon, this looks like a known issue (at least to me). For years I encountered once in a while a problem with Acrobat or Reader when they refused to print one page from a file. The PC version always printed just fine. There is a fairly simple workaround: When getting this problem, quit the printer (reset it, whatever), open print dialog box again and select "print as image". Slow, but always works.
Concerning the two programs, I always used Acrobat or Reader because of very limited functionality of Preview (hence its name). The new one in Leopard allows some highlighting, annotating and copying text, plus rearranging pages, so it looks very similar to Reader. Given the hurdles with printing, Preview may now be superior to Reader or at least quite comparable.
There is another excellent annotating free PDF viewer for Mac, Skim. It is now compatible with 10.5 http://skim-app.sourceforge.net/

I usually use Preview to open most generic garden-variety PDF files, simply because it loads so much faster.

However, Acrobat Reader is required if you wish to look at PDF files created using the PDF 9 or 10 standards, encrypted PDF files, or certain other types of PDF.

And what do you suppose the odds are that Apple will upgrade Preview to handle those specific characteristics?

Depends on what Adobe releases into Open Source or agrees to license to Apple.

I have found that preview suits my less then demanding needs quite well,don't have AR on my MBP.

Many thanks to all for sharing your experiences and thoughts. Indeed I learned quite a bit-

Now, it's wait and see if Snow Leopard brings any unannounced changes to Preview.