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Anyone know exactly when Mac with Intel inside will be on the market, and if the new Intel chip will make things easier for us to use PC Word documents?

The first Intel Mac is expected to be released in one week at Mac world conference in Sanfransisco. The Intel Mac won't affect the document compatibility between Mac and PC. As a user you won't notice anything when working with Mac OSX, no mater if your computer is using an Intel processor or IBM power PC processor.

Do you have problem in opening Word doc. on your Mac, could you please be more specific on this issue so that we can help, if this is possible.

Ahmad

YTLangermann Wrote:Anyone know exactly when Mac with Intel inside will be on the market, and if the new Intel chip will make things easier for us to use PC Word documents?

As Ahmad mentioned, Intel processor doesn't affect OS performance in terms of compatibility with PC documents. This is done at software level installed on Mac.
Right now, there shouldn't be any problem in opening Word documents in left to right languages with Office for Mac.
Currently Office for Mac does not support right to left languages so rtl PC Word documents can't be opened correctly with Office for Mac.
Mellel can import Word documents in both directions but I haven't tested the quality of import in rtl yet.

Thank you both, Ahmad and Behnam, for responding. I was just about to purchase a new Mac (after surrending to PC's for the last few years) when I was advised by the Mac person at my university to hold off, on the grounds that the Intel chip would make it easier to open rtl. Well in the meantime the Intel has been shown at MacWorld, and it seems to have many advantages, so if it will be available soon. maybe I should wait.

Yes Langermann, I think you should wait for Intel version which will be available ahead of schedule. On the other hand, as the first Intel product in Apple line, you may also encounter a period of constant updates and bug fixes. Which is not a big deal because the updates are done automatically.
But for rtl support, the improvments are coming, not related to Intel or IBM hardware. You'll get more speed for the money with Intel version.

Intel Atom is currently the subject of many discussions. He positions himself as a marvel of energy conservation, but also designed to function as an all-purpose solution. The processor will be out of complex architectures and high-level two caches and lean closer to the CPU power saving are adapted to the specific job they are supposed to do.

I have an Acer Aspire One with a 1.6GHz Intel Atom N270 with only 512 MB of RAM and an Intel graphics card with 8MB RAM 845GMA only. This is under Ubuntu Linux with Compiz-Fusion at top speed without reducing the graphics quality. I am really impressed with that and I will definitely update it.