Looking at Exchange. How's it work?

[Pitch]

Title: Looking at Exchange. How's it work?

For the first time in my career (I normally work for myself out of my home office), I need to coordinate a new project with two other people, both whom work from their own offices (a few miles away), and who work on Windows. We're looking around for solutions that would allow us to coordinate our growing list of to-dos, and perhaps our Calendars.

So far, we're researching BaseCamp, as well as SharePoint. But I'd also like to look into Exchange, since I've seen it mentioned in this Entourage group for years, but have never known what it does. I've checked out Microsoft's pages like http://www.microsoft.com/exchange/evaluation/whatis.mspx, but I'm still confused as to how it works, and how easy/complex it is to set up. If there's a steep learning curve, I think I'd skip it, but I'd like to hear from others who may be using it:

1. Does it sync to my Entourage Calendar somehow?
2. Does it sync with Tasks and Notes?

I guess I just need a URL to an idiot's guid to what Exchange is, to find out if it'd be right for a simple project like ours.

thanks for any ideas.

Scott