re-sizing documents and some vista pic help

Hi

Been learning so much from this site, everyone here is phenomenal!!

I have a new laptop (with vista) and there are some issues I'm running into.

One, when I scan multiple pages into a compressed tiff file and then to go turn it into PDF so others can open it ok, windows photogallery shows all pages and can print all pages but I cant use the pdf-driver to choose which pages I want, for example 1-2,5,8
(I'm having to scan into tiff in the first place because the files get too big, more on that below)

Is there any way to fix that by using another program?
Right now I'm working around it by pdf-ing the whole file and then pdf-ing it again with the pages that I want.....................

Anyways, the files are also getting crazy big on this laptop compared to my desktop (they share the same printer/scanner)
I've changed the DPI and all that and they are still too big (often have to do about 15 pages at a time)

Is there a program that can take files on my computer and just shrink them permanently (so not zip)

Oh, and no quick workaround for resizing many pics like one did in XP yet is there? (right click and choose resize pics)

Thanks a bunch in advance, hope I'm in the right section and hello to all