Yes, the conversion engine may be the same and you may guarantee that engine's performance, but if I can't import an existing 570 page Word .doc to see how Briefe handles large files for things like global format changes, search & replace etc then the application itself cannot be tested against it's competition (Mariner Write, Bean, Nisus, Mellel, Pages etc). This is the only wp app I've come across that has not been able to import other formats in unregistered mode.

I think the problem is the wrong synopsis for the App (thats done be the MacUpdate Staff and I wrote to them to please change it :-)

Briefe is really not designed to be a replacement for Word, Mellel or Pages - it is a simple tool to fast write letters from Boilerplates with Drag and Drop and those People who maybe think it is useful would never open 500 pages - even if you could do that also with Briefe

Briefe is for the average user with one up to twenty pages - so that about 90 % of every private Mac - owner :-))

It's not so much case of replacing Word for heavy duty word processing as finding something simpler than Word (overkill but ubiquitous) which can still do the utility side of word processing in a fast and easily managed manner. I opened the Word doc in Word and did a copy & paste into both Briefe and Schreiben then saved the file in Schrieben format and used it to test both apps. The doc is 579 pages - each page is one CD's track listing in table form - so the actual data in the file is quite small but the file size is large and it does give any wp app a pretty good workout. Both Breife and Schrieben take around 25 secs to open the doc and around 20 secs to close and quit. The original Word doc takes around 3 secs in TextEdit and 4 secs in Word to open, all times with the apps closed and timed from selecting "Open" to the file being fully displayed. The good news is that once the doc is opened both apps (Briefe, Schrieben) are very fast indeed in handling the document and lengthy scrolling, searching and global formatting changes are nearly instantaneous. While Word is very fast of course, none of the Open Office variants can do the formatting test in less than around 4 minutes and Bean hangs or crashes. So Briefe and Schrieben are pretty nifty apps, though I think Schrieben has a nicer look to it. I hadn't realized you were responsible for Pilot and quite a few other very nice apps that are on MacUpdate - and your software bundle deal is quite remarkable value. (And to anyone else reading this, use the "More Information" tag to check out the website.)

Aagh! - I meant Pluto, not Pilot!