PDF from Office? Forget it.

Wouldn't it be nice if you could create PDFs directly from Office apps like Word? Sure it would. As it stands now, you pretty much have to pony up $500 to Adobe for their writer, or seek out some of the software created by (very) small publishers. Unfortunately, negotiations between Adobe and Microsoft, which would have allowed Office 2007 to spit out PDF, have broken down.

According to AP, Adobe wanted Microsoft to charge for the service, as well as for Microsoft's own XML Paper Specification (XPS), which is is MS's challenger to PDF.

The deal would have averted a potential antitrust lawsuit, perhaps in the EU, by Adobe, which obviously sees problems with MS building support for XPS into Vista, while Adobe support will be from a free download.