Office 2010 scheduled for June release

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Jos

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Microsoft has already said it hopes to deliver the final version of Office 2010 in the first half of next year, but the folks over at Neowin apparently have it on good authority that the software giant is right on track for a June launch. As many as six different flavors will be offered to customers, including the limited-functionality Starter edition, which will feature free, ad-supported versions of Word and Excel.

Microsoft's latest productivity suite will also be offered in Home and Student, Home and Business, Standard, Professional and Professional Plus editions. No official pricing for the full or upgrade versions of Office 2010 has been announced yet. Additionally the company will make Office Web freely available to anyone with a Live account, and plans to launch Office 2010 for Mac OS X sometime next year.

In the meantime, Windows users can get a glimpse at the suite's newest features by downloading the Microsoft Office 2010 Professional Plus beta here.

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Some friends are testing the beta of office 2010 and it looks nice, haven't played with it, nor seen any function differences, but it still looks nice.
 
Lots of interesting new bells and whistles, for sure. I tinkered a bit, and found I like the layout and some of the command placements much better. I hated when they changed over (2007 version I think?) and moved everything around, it became a nightmare to hunt through and find some very simple and common commands. Looks like somebody was listening to some user feedback with the 2010 version.
 
Vrmithrax said:
Lots of interesting new bells and whistles, for sure. I tinkered a bit, and found I like the layout and some of the command placements much better. I hated when they changed over (2007 version I think?) and moved everything around, it became a nightmare to hunt through and find some very simple and common commands. Looks like somebody was listening to some user feedback with the 2010 version.

This is just rejection to change, and a lot of people has this. I found 2007 version quite a charm, loved the whole icon placement making the taskbar go away.

It's just a matter of likes.
 
I like the idea of an ad-supported versions of Word and Excel. I work in a print shop, and a lot of people bring in very obnoxious formats (I hate Broderbund and all their pain the butt Print Shop programs >_<), but maybe with a free version of Word and Excel I can get more people to use that, and make it easier for us to open.
 
I was not a fan of the change to the ribbon-style menu, far too kludgey for me. It will be very interesting to see how well they've changed it up. If it's anything like Win7 is to Vista, I may end up surprised. Until then, however, OpenOffice all the way :)
 
TorturedChaos said:
I like the idea of an ad-supported versions of Word and Excel. I work in a print shop, and a lot of people bring in very obnoxious formats (I hate Broderbund and all their pain the butt Print Shop programs >_< ), but maybe with a free version of Word and Excel I can get more people to use that, and make it easier for us to open.

it cut off 1/2 my post for some reason :p.
 
Office 2010 seems like a cross between the pre-2005 roll outs and the office 2007. Hopefully it is enough to keep both parties happy, the ones that liked 2007's ribbon layout and the ones that didn't care for it.
 
Microsoft Office is a dinosaur waiting to become extinct.

Most of my correspondence is using emails and on my Blackberry. I work for a large corporation, hardly use at work Word and use Excel for reports and graphs. I bought the last version of Office for my home PC and again many of the features I do not need or use. So it will be the last version.

Even Outlook is getting old and I use it everyday. I find gmail can do what I need to do and it is free.

I will not spend a dime anymore on MS Office.

Bill
 
iv seen some videos of office 2010, it looks pretty cool! although lets be honest, 99% would still be happy using office 98!
 
If Open Office and the like keep improving it will be ever more challenging fro Office. I haven't been able to try the beta but from what I have seen or read MS might be in for very positive reviews ala Win7
 
With so many versions i'm sure that people will be very confused about which one to buy. They made win7 simple enough, why not make office too? 6 versions is too much. 3 or 4 would have done the trick.
 
I have Office 2007, but rarely have any use for it. Open Office is my #1 choice. Guess we'll have to wait and see what Office 2010 is like.
 
It's kind of funny to me because where I work we just now got the ok to roll out Office2k7. I wonder how many years it'll be until we actually begin putting Office 2010 to use. But I really wish we'd of just held off longer and put the money to office 2010 come summer. They should only release 2 versions imo, paid and ad-supported..nothing else.
 
I am getting really tired of Microsoft's "editions" of software. Technology is already complicated enough, and this kind of thing makes project planning that much more difficult, and poor decisions have yet another consequence. I don't think that there should be a single version by any means, but when paying for a piece of software that continually changes the way it's setup dramatically, it makes a full version free alternative that much more attractive.
 
Looks pretty good, im using 2007 and i like the changes from 2003. I didnt use 2010 but it looks similar so ill probably like it =)
 
Once again, too many versions. The ad-supported version might be interesting, though, depending on how it's implemented. I personally don't mind seeing an ad once in a while if it doesn't cover half the screen.
 
@kibaruk, very true about the reaction to change, it's hard to go to something new when you've had years the old way (the whole "teaching an old dog new tricks" addage, perhaps). But some of the ways they buried common functions when they did the big changeover just baffled me... And baffled many users, you should have seen the uproar! heh. It was a little bit like the ones in charge of the user interface were only very light users, so the interface was geared that way, but the real meat of the customer base for Office tend to be more power users.

In any event, the 2010 version really seems to have a good balance of ease of use and quick accessibility to power features. A nice package, which it has to be to make it worthy of the hefty pricetag usually associated with Office. So many groups I personally know are going to OpenOffice, I've got to wonder how widespread that is, and if it is a little worrisome for the Microsoft juggernaut.
 
^^^^ I whole-heartedly agree. If it weren't for OpenOffice, Microsoft would still charge all of us out the butt for something like this. A suite like that would easily go for 100 bucks or more. When Google has started causing Microsoft heartache, you know that times have changed.
 
Microsoft, ONE version, ONE price! Are you listening?!? <goes back to writing business report on Open Office>
 
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