Buy a scanner and you’ll always find some software bundled with it. But it’s generally either too basic, or old, bloated, and difficult to use. So a simple task like scanning a page to a PDF file may well be beyond its capabilities.

If converting scanned documents to graphical PDF files (that is, images rather than text) is something you do often, then, you might be able to save considerable time and hassle with a third-party alternative – and these don’t come much easier to use than the free WinScan2PDF.

Launch the program, for instance, and you’re looking at its entire interface: three buttons, and a checkbox. So the “Select Source” button allows you to choose your scanner; clicking “Scan to PDF” initiates a scan, and saves the results with the file name you provide; the “Multiple Pages” checkbox tells the program you’re scanning more than a single page, and the Cancel button tells WinScan2PDF to stop waiting for data (which might be handy if, say, a page has jammed in your document feeder).

And WinScan is also portable and extremely lightweight, so it’s not going to clutter your system. Unzip it onto a USB flash drive, say, and you’ll find a 39KB executable, an INI file, and that’s it: the author claims this will then work on every version of Windows from 98 upwards.

Obviously this level of simplicity does have its limitations. In particular, there’s no way to customise the finished PDF file: you can’t define how it’s displayed initially, impose any restrictions on it (“can’t copy”, “can’t print” and so on), password-protect the document, automatically add a header page or anything else.

Still, if you just want to regularly save scanned pages as PDF graphics, then WinScan2PDF will do the job well, and with the absolute minimum of hassle. And of course, because the program is so lightweight, you can try it without worrying about your system getting cluttered. If you don’t like it for whatever reason, delete the download file and the program folder and there won’t be any remaining trace of WinScan2PDF on your hard drive.