NWP is ugly. It also makes layout mistakes when opening Word documents. Mellel is so ugly that I couldn’t even bring myself to try it. Pages has one major flaw–no autosave. What’s the deal with that?
As a result, though I hate MS, I’m still using Word when not in Scriv. It’s not pretty, but the 08 version is nicer looking than Mellel & even NWP.
Indeed, It is ugly. And it is overwhelmed with icons – at least one can hide all the unwanted icons 
But Word 2004 is horribly slow on my MacPro (Intel 2,66/8g RAM) & my MacBook (Intel 2,16/3gigs ram) when working on long document with illustrations. I mean really slow. On a MacPro ? 
Even Roseta isn’t a valid excuse
NeoOffice, on the other hand is long to boot but then works faster than Word 2004. And it works rather well on relatively complex Word documents we sometimes receive (no sophisticated layout, that said). It works definitly much much better than NWP or Mellel for that matter.
I just took a look and the 08 version of Word does look pretty good - though it’s not out until January (2008 apparently, but we’ll see about that). 
If it’s anything like Word 2007 for Windows, it’s a completely different interface and everything will have to be relearned. Very frustrating for someone who’s been using Word for a long long time and knows it well (as in me).
If you go with it, prepare for newbie status all over again. 
This article may be helpful:
appleinsider.com/articles/07 … s_3_0.html.
I’m one who has hated Word’s interface since version 6.0. So, I’m ready to check for the new version with joy. From the screenshots, it seems that they have learned something from other Mac developers.
Paolo
pages will not import my footnotes. I downloaded neooffice. I have Open Office but neo loads faster and it is also free.
The footnotes work fine whe you export the document and open it with new. The comments, I wasn’t surprised they didn’t show… they simply are not handled in open office.
So if you are looking for a program that will do this and is a very capable word processor give either open office or neo office a swirl
If you need things like indexes… stick to open office and all the ugliness that is X-11.
Yes I am a fan of open source as well… and yes, I use word '07 on the WIN machine… the only reason we got it was… there are some things that for once it does better than it’s open office competitor.
