During the last days I've been asked several times for the possibility to convert, as easy as possible, any Word-files into pdfs. Usually one of the following things crossed my mind instantly:

- OpenOffice offers the option to save files as pdfs.

- The Office 2007 plugin "Save as PDF" (naturally requires Office 2007)

- The Acrobat Distiller (Part of the commercial Acrobat from Adobe)

From time to time I made myself some trouble searching for an up-to-date version of some tools, that might could help me, but most of the time I recommended, to the guys that haven't had Office 2007 installed, to download and install OpenOffice.

Since today I would recommend, to the guys without Office 2007, because I like its plugin, to download the "PDF Printer" from Bullzip. The PDF-Printer ist free and requires only the installation of "Ghostscript". Both downloads can be found on the download-page of Bullzip:

After the installation, there's a new printer placed in your system control panel. If you select that device and print your document, a dialog appears, which asks you for the target file location. After you selected the destination, everything will happen automatically.