Win2PDF is a program that allows you to easily convert any document to PDF (Adobe Acrobat) format in a Windows Environment.  Win2PDF installs as a printer driver.  So you open your document in its native application, and then you print it to the Win2PDF printer to create the PDF file.  It's simple and reliable.

There's a free version that puts an extra page on the end of the PDF file that states that it was created using Win2PDF.  You can purchase the commercial version for a reasonable fee to avoid that trailer page.

There are a lot of PDF creation programs out there, including an open source one at SourceForge.  What makes Win2PDF stand out is that has a special version designed to work reliably in a Terminal Services environment.  I haven't seen this feature from other vendors, yet.

I've found Adobe's "Adobe PDF" printer driver to "blow up" on me frequently.  Adobe's Acrobat Distiller program is a lot more reliable than the "Adobe PDF" printer driver, but it's a time-consuming, tedious process to use Distiller.  When I want to create a PDF to email to someone or hang on the web site, Win2PDF gets it done reliably and in a minimal amount of time.

One catch that you may run into is font conversion.  If you create a PDF file with Win2PDF and find that the fonts look goofy or are spaced incorrectly, Win2PDF didn't convert the font properly.  This is because it only supports the basic fonts that Acrobat Reader supports (Courier, Helvetica, Time, Symbol, and ZapfDingbats).  If you are using another TrueType font besides the ones I just mentioned, and the font substitution is unsatisfactory, you need to go into the Device Settings section of the Win2PDF printer driver and access the "Font Substitution Table".  Change the misbehaving font to "Print as Graphics".  This has fixed the problem every time for me.  It will make the PDF file a little "heavier", but it will look sharp.  To read more about this issue, go to http://www.daneprairie.com/support/faq.htm and view the "What type of fonts does Win2PDF support" entry.

Also, Win2PDF only supports TrueType fonts, not PostScript fonts.  Sorry!  These limitations would make this product unsatisfactory for a professional graphics designer.  However, it works great for the average office worker.

I found out about this product while I was researching PDF creation problems I was having with Adobe Acrobat at http://www.google.com/.  If you want to learn more about this great product, go to http://www.daneprairie.com/.  Make sure that you spell the URL correctly.  I forgot the first "i" once and ended up on a porn site!