Whereas previous editions of Word offered ways to add annotations and comments to documents, there's now a way to take that collaboration onto the web. So Just when you thought your work was complete, your assembly over, or your policy written, others can go to the bit they quibble over, click the button and pick their holes. Evidently in the wired world, while you need no longer meet with others or you can at least work with those far away. If you've ever found that your computer couldn't read a certain type of file, Office 2000 now helps you round this. In the past, if you needed a feature that wasn't installed, or read work from another machine, your system would play clueless and give up.
Office now takes a more intelligent approach and requests the cdrom so that it can install it.
Those who manage networks might offer everyone a typical set of features, and leave Office to install new ones as people need them. It should save on disc space and save on their being hassled too. Time will tell. Office for the Macintosh on a different development schedule to the PC, so with PC and Mac editions leapfrogging each other over the years, Apple users are at least spared the decision to upgrade or not. Office nevertheless offers something for all but the typist.