Three weeks and counting since the production launch of SP2010 here at eGroup and we are already reaping some productivity benefits over the MOSS2007 site.  One of the items I have been thoroughly impressed with is the multitude of ways in which SharePoint can interact with your office applications while not locking the user into one specific path.  SharePoint 2010 gives users three main ways to interact with the application...
<ul>
	<li>The traditional web interface - by traditional we mean greatly enchanced with inline edits of doc libraries and lists without page refreshes using AJAX techniques.</li>
	<li>Outlook Integration - certainly nothing new here but SP2010 Foundation does allow two way communication in the free version of SharePoint (Foundation).</li>
	<li>SharePoint Workspace 2010 - Far and away my favorite.  SharePoint Workspace 2010 ships with Office 2010 Professional and doesn't disappoint.  Many have said that SharePoint Workspace 2010 is to SharePoint what Outlook is to Exchange.  The ability to manage, communicate and receive alert notifications on changes within the site through a client side application is excellent.  Not to mention offline access to document libraries and SharePoint data and a sleak background sync mechanism to keep it all up to date.  If this doesn't finally kill Exchange shared folders then nothing will.</li>
</ul>
There are many features within these three components that make SharePoint 2010 integration with your traditional Office tools much more in depth such as...

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<ul>
	<li>Connect To Office:  This new to SharePoint 2010 feature allows you to connect a list or library to other Office products such as Word, Excel and PowerPoint.  When you go to open or save a document you have the option inside that application to save and open directly from the document library.</li>
	<li>Connect to Outlook:  An oldie but goodie allows you to connect libraries, Calendars and lists to your Outlook client and manage them from within the familiar confines of Outlook.  Data piggybacks of the Send/Receive tasks and you have a take anywhere copy of the data wherever you have an internet connection (assuming your site is net accessible).</li>
	<li>Drag and Drop in SharePoint Workspace.  It is hard to describe the tool without seeing it first hand but it is simplistic in design in the fact that it allows you to connect to SP sites, communicate with other site members and share and access documents stored on those sites with a completely non-intrsive background sync job.</li>
</ul>
Contact <a title="eGroup" href="http://egroup.jasonmangone.com" target="_blank">eGroup</a> today and allow us to give you the quick tour of what can be gained by migrating or launching your new SharePoint 2010 site!