So, I recently acquired a 2nd hand Powerbook G4 for home use and the occasional trip to the office.

I have found that the "Microsoft factor" is not as important in terms of actual use, but more of a psychological issue. Although I rarely do it (once a week, maybe?); Once in a while I need to open a word or powerpoint doc from work and I know that the apps are available just in case.

I assumed IE would be just as good on OS-X, suffice to say I am now happily running Chimera (Gecko rendering engine) which can render pages significantly faster than the latest IE. Not a big deal, Mozilla is just fine these days.

While I applaud MS for making some of my "core" biz apps for Mac, they left out my most used app -- Outlook.

Most businesses I have worked with run Exchange server and make full use of its calendering, shared files, and more. My employer is no different.

Microsoft spent more time writing a whole new app (Entourage) with no support for Exchange servers in site. My only alternatives are IMAP4 via Apple's email client or Entourage, not a good replacement for Outlook. Beyond that, I can use Webmail, but Microsoft has made sure that even with IE, Webmail doesn't work as well as on the Windows version of IE.

If that's not an agenda to keep the Mac as far away from the workplace and non-engineering-or-design people, I don't know what is.

Tim, the next time you are up in Redmond, would you mind asking where proper Exchange/Outlook support is hiding?

-Matthew

oh, BTW - I have resorted to using the very nice RDC client to take over my XP box and load up outlook that way, much cleaner than running "Classic" on my pure OS-X system.