A PDF file looks the same as a printed copy of your document, even when being displayed on the Internet. When a document is viewed, it is exactly as the creator intended it to appear, including features difficult to recreate on an Internet page such as headers & footers and multiple columns. The PDF file takes on the page layout attributes set by the selected printer driver when the file was created.
In the case of PowerPoint documents you are able to create presentations that can run on the Internet from a single file – try to do a similar action from within PowerPoint (Save as HTML) and you end up with many files and folders for the one presentation.
PDF files generally, but not always, take up less disk space than the original file. For example a Microsoft Word file of 2.3Mb was reduced to approximately 350k using the PDF Writer (only available in the full version of Adobe Acrobat - not Adobe Acrobat Reader). Smaller file sizes are important when transporting a file (trying to fit it on a floppy disk) or downloading from the Internet. Please note that the size of the resulting file compared to the original document varies greatly depending on the content of the file (text/graphics) and the options you select when making the PDF.
Additional Adobe Acrobat Reader documentation can be found on http://www.umbc.edu/oit/software/pages/Acrobat.htm
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