I take this tool so much for granted that I forgot to mention it in my original post.

Primo PDF is a free document converter to PDF. To use it, you print your document from whatever software you’re using (MS Word, Firefox, etc…) and choose the PDF writer instead of the default printer. Instead of the document going to your printer, it gets written to a PDF file. Très bien!

There is another PDF writer called CutePDF that I know some people use. I have this thing called SiteAdvisor from McAfee and it’s telling me that CutePDF has “adware, spyware or other potentially unwanted programs.” I actually have both installed and both work fine for me, but thought I should share what McAfee thinks about CutePDF.