I cannot come up with any argument that justifies the auto-save feature being turned off in a desktop or user-oriented distribution.
I don't see any reason why this would be deactivated(it sure isn't in MS Office, I just checked a new install).
Colin's point of the NFS mounted home directory completely escapes me. If someone can come up with a reason that can sink into my thick head, I would like to know. At this moment it seems a very "elitist" position to think that the average user(my spouse for instance) would have any reason to assume that a feature like this would be deactivated. These types of assumptions will keep all flavors of Linux from taking over decent market share of the home desktop market.
Maybe Fedora isn't the right solution for the average person? :-(
P.S. Is this message over the top? I can never tell when I cross the line! :)