Tonight someone sent me an email with a spreadsheet in it. The extension was .xlsx, not something Office for the Mac understands. I clicked on it anyway to see what would happen. Here's what happened:

• Parallels fired up Excel in Windows in "coherence" mode so that my Windows version of Excel was running in it's own window--just like a regular application.
• Excel in Windows tried to open the file, but realized it was for Office 2007.
• Safari on Windows (apparently now my default browser) fired up and offered to download the compatibility pack.
• I did that and installed it, but couldn't figure out how to use it from there.

So, I still couldn't read the file, but I was amazed at the experience anyway. I'm sure if I'd tried, I could have figured it out, but I'm too tired.