Just a clarification... use of NTEXT in 2k does NOT allow you to violate the 8060 rule. The data that's normally stored in the table is a numeric pointer to the data which is actually "out of row" just like Gail said.

So far as changing the app to use NTEXT instead of NVARCHAR(4000), I don't believe it'll be as easy as you think. There are very few SQL functions that work on NTEXT and you cannot do things like "concatenation" to add to existing data without jumping through the hoop of determining the value of the pointer, etc. In summary, there are very few things that are similar between NTEXT and NVARCHAR. If you do decide to test it, make real sure it's on a test machine because I believe you're in for a bit of work.

I'll also give you a hint about something that may help you work past some of the shortcomings of handling NTEXT and TEXT datatypes... although you cannot explicitly declare an NTEXT or TEXT variable, they can be defined as parameters for a stored procedure. An "easy" way to get around all of the normal T-SQL manipulations for NTEXT is to do it all in the GUI and pass the result back though a proc for final storage (overwritten replacement if necessary).