My employer recently bought the "full" Acrobat product to allow us (actually, me) to create PDFs. I found it pretty frustrating; although the product has loads of capabilities I'll never use, I wasn't readily able to do the one thing I needed, which was to merge two existing files (one MS Word, one MS Publisher, both 11 x 17 "two-page spreads") into a single PDF. I finally managed to produce the desired result, thanks to a workaround suggested by a fellow user on a self-help forum site.

As it turns out, the less expensive "Distiller" would have provided the same basic functions I use in the "full" Acrobat, at a considerably lower (but still substantial) cost.