[Lawrie]

Don't forget you can directly save your Word-files as PDF from Word (though there is no batch converting in Word AFAIK).

While true, I've found that such PDFs are often very large in comparison to other ways of creating them.  E.G. I use a PDF printer application that presents to Windows as a printer.  Many of my PDFs are around 1/10th or less than the size they would be if generated directly by Word.

To demonstrate, I just did a quick test.  I created a document that contained the word "test" at 72 point.
Export to PDF from Word = 176k
Print to PDF using PDF24 = 11k

Guess which one I use...