I've heard rumors to the effect that the MacOS version of Word won't support all the XML-related functions of PC Word, even in the Pro version. That's the only feature I'd consider compelling at this point.

Foo.

I hope it's a lot faster than the beta version... My wife was on the beta test program and every application in the entire bundle simply crawled on her 1.25 GHz Al PowerBook. It was little better on my 1.4 GHz G4 desktop.

Unless they've managed to make everything much snappier, the only people who aren't going to be disappointed by the speed will be those with dual G5 machines.

Do Mac based offices NOT need to share contacts and calendars in an integrated way?

Wasn't the Mac all about sharing - from the begining?

How come even Apple's products (iCal, Addressbook) don't share?

I never see any discussion of this problem. No Mac products provide shared access to addresses, calendars and communication in an integrated manner. Some do some of the job but none do it all.

Why can't different smaller publishers make products that integrate with each other? I would think that Apple's offerings would be a basis for someone to add value to by extending.

Can someone tell me "what gives?" Most comments on the topic assume that one has an Exchange Server run by some IT department. Hey, I AM the IT department and guess what, we ONLY use Macs.

Is th answer that we are stupid for not doing Windows like everyone else - so how can we expect "enterprise" capabilities. How big doy ou have to be for it to be legitimate to want integration of company information?

From what I've played with in Office 2004's Project Center, you can share projects with other Office users over file shares and DAV servers (.Mac). That means you can share contacts, notes, tasks, files, and calendars with others without needing an Exchange server.

Years ago our firm was surprised when a new vesion of Excel came out that was slower than the previous version (maybe back to v3 or v4).

At the time we had some models that ran for two or three minutes - and even longer with the new version. At the time we had access to MS development via a consultant we used. We sent them our model - not "rocket science", btw.

The reply was that Excel's target market is accounting and speed is not a design priority.

Shocked, we bought a copy of "Wingz" - which opened Excel files and our eyes. Our model ran in 20 seconds! Too bad Claris got a hold of Wingz - marketed as Claris Resolve. Like everthing Claris touched, they let it die by not polishing its interface and promoting its power. The world's collective loss, IMHO.

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Guest wrote:
...you can share projects with other Office users over file shares and DAV servers (.Mac). That means you can share contacts, notes, tasks, files, and calendars with others without needing an Exchange server.