A sneak preview of Microsoft Office 2010, due for release next year, shows some interesting differences over the current version – though the ribbon interface, hated by some and loved by others – remains intact.
The good news is that Office 2010 will run on any machine that can handle Office 2007. In addition, the new suite supports Windows 7, Vista and XP SP3.
One of the most useful new features is the ability to edit images from within Word, thus eliminating the irritation and time wasting of having to switch to a dedicated image editor such as Photoshop. The same facility in PowerPoint lets users do simple editing of video content embedded into a presentation.
Collaboration looms large in Office 2010, with Word, PowerPoint, and OneNote letting multiple users work simultaneously on the same document. However, this feature is available only to users running SharePoint for Business or Windows Live for home users. This will entail forking out extra dosh to squeeze max muscle out of Office. No surprises there.
Another aspect that potential buyers need to know about it is that the Office 2010 installation uses up a minimum of 1.5GB of free disk space – though that’s not a disaster these days, when even laptop drives routinely tip the scales at 160 gigs. It might, however, choke a netbook or a skinny solid state Flash HDD.
One feature we like is the improved cut-and-paste facility, which provides previews of impending changes before they are locked down. Usefully, it also offers options of pasting text into Word using either the source document formatting or the formatting of the target document.
Overall, Office 2010 is not so much one giant leap for mankind as a series of useful steps for office productivity. So bosses should like it. Will you? Pricing will undoubtedly figure in this decision, but no figures have so far been forthcoming from Redmond.
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