Microsoft Office 2010 goes gold, coming soon

[Matthew DeCarlo]

In an official blog post yesterday, Microsoft announced that Office 2010, SharePoint 2010, Visio 2010, and Project 2010 have reached the release-to-manufacturing (RTM) stage. For the uninitiated, RTM is the final development milestone before a software product goes public.

Redmond took a moment to thank the folks who slaved over its latest productivity suite as well as the more than 7.5 million people who downloaded the beta version since last November. That's quite the response and it's over three times the amount of downloads Microsoft Office 2007 Beta had.

MSDN and TechNet subscribers will have access to the software starting April 22. Volume Licensees with Software Assurance will be able to download the 2010 products via the Volume Licensing Service Center starting April 27, while customers without SA will be able to get them through the VLSC starting May 1.

Microsoft Office 2010 will officially launch on May 12 and it should land on retail store shelves in June.

Permalink to story.

https://www.techspot.com/news/38628-microsoft-office-2010-goes-gold-coming-soon.html

 

[Route44]

Anyone know if a) it will be backwards compatible, b) just how different it is from the the 2003 and 2007 versions, and c) will it work with XP?

Okay, I'm lazy at the moment but I can ask.

 

[DarkCobra]

Well it better be sufficiently better than 2007 or else what's the point. I would also think it will "function" with XP because so many still use that OS, though no doubt it will be optimized for Windows 7/Vista. I just hope the pricing is reasonable.

 

[lchu12]

I'd hold off and see how well it is recieved. I just got comfortable with 2007 and now they want to change it....It might be a similar to a Vista launch see what we like and what we don't then bust out a newer version within a year...or was that what 2007 was?...hmmm....

 

[Guest]

Tried the beta. Horrible performance and minor UI changes. Overall this product is not worth even a $50 price tag.

 

[gobbybobby]

been using Beta for a while, Few crashes. But some bugs that wherein office 2007 still in 2010. UI looks a little better thank god the MS office button is gone! how much longer I get it free? Lost my ofice 2007 disc 1. have product key prob get just disc 1 off TPB.

 

[Guest]

I don't think there has been any "real improvement" in several offices. granted i only use excel,and word,power-point. and when forced to access, but really it just isn't worth the cost to upgrade every time they bring out a new one. 07 was good once you figured out the ribbon.

 

[DarkCobra]

I think the Ribbon on 2007 is what bothered me the most. Yes, it was a clever way of getting all the tools up there. However, the flip side of that is you still have to wade through lots of tools you rarely use. I'm hoping that 2010 at least offers the OPTION to once again create a tool bar with just the tools an end user truly needs.

 

[Guest]

I've been using the 2010 beta for a few months now, and I love it. Like several others have said, 2007 had plenty of issues, and you had to fight with the Office button and ribbons. In 2010, the giant orb is gone and you can make your own custom toolbar and place it either in the window border (very space efficient) or below the ribbon. Fortunately, you can also make the ribbon stay collapsed to just the text tabs, so you can literally have two rows of stuff (including the window border) and then your document. Several of the menus have been reorganized so they make more sense, and there are really cool new sharing features such as document collaboration, live online presentation sharing, and exporting powerpoint presentations to video. It is backwards compatible with all previous versions of Office, and you can easily change preferences to save using the old file formats for compatibility (.doc, .xls, .ppt) I highly recommend you at least try it out for free while the beta is still available. http://www.microsoft.com/office/2010/en/default.aspx