How to create PDFs since Windows Fax and Scan won't

You'll first need a document scanner, of course, but yes, Microsoft's operating system ships with the ability to scan out of the box. The program you use is called Windows Fax and Scan.

That said, there's no way I know of to save a scanned image to a PDF with Windows Fax and Scan. Instead, the file-format options are .bmp, .jpg, .png, and .tif.

Converting one of these graphic image files to a PDF is easy enough using Microsoft Word. You simply copy the image into a Word document and then save it as a PDF. You can also use a third-party tool such as PDFCreator to convert graphic image files to PDFs.

On a related note, there's a Modern UI application in Windows 8 called "Reader." This app can be used to view and make changes to PDF files.

In addition, it's possible to edit PDFs natively in Office 2013.

Like most things in the Windows 8 interface, Reader is ridiculously frustrating to use on a traditional, non-touch PC. You may find the easiest thing to do is use Adobe Reader to deal with PDFs. More information on the Reader app can be found on Microsoft's product page.