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Since switching to a Macbook Pro as my main computer, I have separated work from personal by running my work environment in VMware Fusion. It has worked very well for me. I am able to get everything I need for work in the VM session and keep it separate from my personal playground in OS X.

Recently, somebody in the office wanted a Macbook Air. A very cool computer! I have thought about getting one, but I do not think that it will be a great computer to run OS X and VM upon - not enough power. Anyway, the person was not going to run VM, they wanted to run their work environment within OS X, which ment Microsoft Office 2011. I had not tried Microsoft Office 2011, but when IT had problems getting Outlook to work on the Macbook Air, I loaded Microsoft Office 2011 on my Macbook Pro to see if I had any problems with it.

Slow

Outlook was the first application that I tried. I was able to easily connect Outlook to our Exchange 2007 environment, but then everything stopped. Ok, just Outlook stopped. It became unresponsive, so I just let it run. I am not sure how long it was unresponsive. I think Outlook needed to synchronize all my information and until it was done, I could not do anything with it.

Once the "sync" was done, Outlook started responding as I would expect it to respond. I still run into times when Outlook will freeze for no apparent reason, which is frustrating. I keep my mailbox pretty thin, only about 2 Gig. When I asked IT about the other user, they indicated his mailbox was north of 7 Gig - so, I suggested that they set up Outlook and let it run overnight before doing anything with the machine and that seemed to fix Outlook for now.

Outlook

Once I got Outlook running, I have found that Outlook has most of the features that I have come to expect in Outlook for Windows with the exception of viewing other's calendars. In Outlook for Mac, you view other's calendars by overlaying them on your calendar, where as in Outlook for Windows, you see the calendar side by side. I find the Windows view much easier to use, especially when I have to look at two or three calendars at the same time.

Word and Excel

I have found Word and Excel to be just fine for what I use them for.  I do not do any fancy macros, just editing document and spread sheets.  I have not tried any graphics in Excel yet, but I normally do not do a lot of them anyway.

Power Point

About the only thing that I have done with Power Point is open and view a few presentations and everything has been ok.  I have not tried to create a presentation yet.

RDC

A pleasant surprise within Microsoft Office 2011 is the Remote Desktop Client(RDC).  RDC allows me to have a remote desktop session for a Windows server.  This is something that has been missing within Mac OS X and it makes a big difference when I am working in a Windows environment.  I have used the client and it is fairly good.  I have had some problems with it once and a while where something I typed would get duplicated for certain characters.  It is annoying in some windows, especially for password entries when you have not idea that something has gone wrong.  It does not happen often, but a pain in the neck.

No Visio

The only thing that is really missing from Microsoft is Visio!  I use Visio frequently for network diagrams and flow charting.  Microsoft has yet to produce a version of Visio for Mac.  There are a few pieces of software that propose to be Visio replacements for the Mac.  I have downloaded them and kicked the tires, but do not have anything definitive to say about them yet.