Do I need to give up on Acrobat for the Mac?

I am using Acrobat Professional 8.1.2 on an Intel Mac with OSX 10.5.2. Under
Office 2004, I am unable to get documents through the Distiller properly. Two
examples:
i) I have a one page Excel file that has a couple hyperlinks in it. Distiller
starts, the progress bar gets about 80% of the way across, and then it just
stops. No error messages or crashes, it just stops and sits there until I
eventually hit the "cancel" button.
ii) I have a 200+ page Word file that has no links or anything - I just want to
convert it to a simple pdf file. Distiller starts, but runs at a rate of about 1
page every 2-3 seconds; simply too slow to deal with.

If I start Parallels (with Office 2003 and Acrobat Standard for Windows), the
same files convert very quickly with no issues whatsoever.

You are correct - the Mac version is not as powerful as the Windows 
version in respect of PDF Makers and Office integration.

However, have you tried going to Advanced / Document Processing / Create 
Links ..

This option is often overlooked for URLs which describe themselves ...