the paper way works too, just as John says. Agreed that it's odd that it scans directly to pdf but not fax.
We don't have adobe on all the computers anyway but we do have paperport. So it's just as simple for us to open the .tif file, discard the cover page, and save as .pdf. Not really that difficult honestly and just works well for us.
It would be nice if it faxed directly to .pdf but definitely not a necessity.