Hi Rox!
We use PWS for two things: Taking work on the road when connection to the office server may not be possible and for doing demos to possible clients without having to have access to the internet (always expensive at trade shows). I wouldn't use it for anything else, especially actual production work. As Rick mentioned, PWS was really meant to be used for development pending deployment to an actual full-blown web server. It can't handle any serious load.
As for FrontPage, it wants an actual web server to connect to instead of just using disk directories (although you can do this). And in order to use the web bots and stuff, you have to have an actual web server to load the FrontPage server extensions to. That's why it likes to install PWS. But PWS is NOT necessary for FrontPage to work. FrontPage will connect to any available web server (that has the FrontPage server extensions loaded) as long as you have the appropriate permissions to the server.
HTH!
"It is an important and popular fact that things are not always what they seem. For instance, on the planet Earth, man had always assumed that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so much -- the wheel, New York, wars and so on -- whilst all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in the water having a good time. But conversely, the dolphins had always believed that they were far more intelligent than man -- for precisely the same reasons." - Douglas Adams
