Pier v. Plone

Hello, I am exploring my options for a couple of websites. I am a big fan of Squeak, Seaside and Pier. But I have been exploring and learning about Plone. There is a tremendous amount of energy and work behind Plone and products available for it. Plone 3.0 is about to be released. They have put a lot of work into UI usability and into a lot of areas which are nice to not necessarily implement yourself. That said, I don't really have a grasp as to how far Pier is from Plone-like abilities for both the end user and the developer. One thing I am looking at is the Plone4Artist product which implements a very sweet package for multimedia and Plone. http://www.plone4artists.com/ I do very much like Squeak over Python. In general I like Seaside/Pier over Zope/Plone. I know that Lukas has used Zope/Plone, but I don't know how current his knowledge is. How far is Pier from offering a competitive experience to end users and developers with regard to something like Plone? Is there any interest in the community of competing in that sphere? Or do most here happily use Seaside/Pier as a toolbox and the bigger application type CMS isn't on the radar? And initially I speak as to a basic Plone 3.0 out-of-the-box capabilities and user/developer experience. Not necessarily the plethora of add-on products. Those can come later if the out-of-the-box experience is compelling enough. Naively it seems that content types are easier to develop in Pier as opposed to Plone. I just don't know how much I could build on Pier towards a Plone-like experience in the time it takes to do some things in Plone. And I really don't know how much of the machinery that makes Plone what it is, is in Pier. Or the effort to get there. Comments regarding my questions above or most anything relevant to Pier v. Plone 3.0 are greatly appreciated. Thanks. Jimmie