Office 2010 Launches Today

What makes it so much better than 03 or 07?

They have unified the UI for all the Office apps. And then a million of minor details. Probably normal users won't see them much, but they are nice to have if you are a power user. Also, no idea if 2003 or 2007 will work with the Office Live documents.

I'll get a new version of Office when they get rid of the ribbons.  I've been using 2007 for two years and it still takes me forever to find anything I don't use that often.  2003 for life!!!

Later,
LAR

I have to wait for all my addons to be compatible, the features aren't that stunning to have me running out to part with that kind of money   One thing I have to say is that office remains pretty unfortunately priced. 

http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/buy/office-2010-which-suite-is-right-for-you-FX101825640.aspx

Home/Student will run ya a buck fifty.  Add an extra 100 and some change, and you get home and student with outlook.  Seriously?  Outlook is worth a hundred bucks?  Like:  who would really want to spend that kind of money on Outlook of all things? 

I really wish they'd let me just build my own a la carte package. 

Dr guy:  I can't speak to the other applications, because I would never use them, but the quick and dirty on Excel's new features:

-http://www.powerpivot.com/videos.aspx   Power Pivot

-Onboard support for some sparklines, though I think the pros will still use SfE (http://sparklines-excel.blogspot.com/) for quite some time. 

-Improved conditional formatting. 

In addition to that, I know there were some efforts made to automate some aspects of reporting but that likely won't come up for home users and otherwise will require some time with the IT department before it gets rolled out:) 

Larry:  The ribbon still is a point of contention.  I rather like it, but I know quite a few people who would sooner chew broken glass than nod the ribbon.  Although, from an Excel only perspective:  07 is vastly superior to 03, so you're kind of stuck.  

I can't see $130.00 extra just to get Outlook. The difference between home/student and home/office is the addition of Outlook only. I can't believe Microsoft could ever put Outlook on the market for $130 and sell it. If the difference was say 50 or 60 dollars I might purchase it. I'm still using 2003 and to be honest it works just fine for me without all the other fancy menus. I'm not saying for people that use the office programs the new version isn't good but a casual user like myself doesn't need to learn all over again.

Nice post however with letting us know it's released and thanks.

Thanks Dan_I.  It will probably prove very useful to some, but not for the average joe.  As for the ribbons, I figure we just have to get use to it.  I think it is just a matter of comfort.  I was very comfortable with the old style menus, and just have to learn how to navigate ribbons.

In that, Microsoft help still sucks, but at least Google (or Bing) is at your fingertips.

What I find fascinating about the outlook thing:  Really there's just no reason to use it at home.  There's plenty of applications that do the same thing, better, and for free - not to mention web applications. 

I agree Dr Guy.  As a matter of fact, the average user could use Zoho, Gdocs, or Open Office anyway:)

I might at least consider it then, but I wouldn't bet on that happening. So I'll keep on using Office XP/2002 on Win7, which works just fine.

Buying office once is plenty enough anyway--there hasn't exactly been any must-have progress in word processing and spreadsheet software in the past decade, after all.

After having to use Access 07, I can say that it's not just a matter of comfort--the ribbon is just bad UI. You still have to swap ribbon modes constantly and dig around for certain functions just to get stuff done, which defeats half the point of it. The ribbon is only practical to use in apps that have few enough functions to put them all on there at once.

I would image that they have market studies showing that enough people are afraid of losing what is stored in their current Outlook to not take a chance and fork over the $100 extra.  Seems out-ragious to me if that is indeed the only difference.

Well, for those of us with old version, the outlook still works.  I have not tried mixing versions of office, but at $130 for outlook, it is worth a try if I ever do decide to upgrade (or I should say when MS forces us to because of docx, y and z changes).

iPhone sync requires OL2003 or later, FWIW.  Only reason I still use OL, and only reason I'm still not using OL2000 which is far better than OL2003.  OL is the most user-unfriendly email app I can imagine.  That they charge anything for it at all is robbery.  I'd use Thunderbird for both personal & business otherwise.  Have to admit that reviews of OL2010 have been good, in the sense that they fixed some things that should have been fixed a decade ago.

Other than OL2003, I'm still using Office2000.  I know they're abandoning support for it, but it still does all I need.

I have found the acceleration of Office 2010 to be well worth the upgrade.  It's night and day.    

Abiword anyone?

Yay good thing too, new laptops this year will have it

although I question the need for the new 2010 version when they have launched a web version, and since 2007 is pretty good I don't know why they are even bother.

Is Open Office a good alternative, you know, for the rest of us that don't have unlimited bank accounts? 

I D/L'd & installed OO a year or two ago but had problems with it properly formatting my existing Word docs & templates so went back to MSO.  Admittedly, I use highly formatted docs with tables & columns, but OO advertises itself as able to read & write .doc files.  I seem to recall some odd crash issues as well, but someone who's used it more recently may be a better critic.

I don't see the Ribbon going away any time soon now that they have ported the whole Office, most Windows apps, MS partners are selling it as a control,...

You can try the Ribbon Hero add-on/game to see if you may change your oppinion about it, although Ribbon love/hate is pretty extreme in general

http://www.officelabs.com/ribbonhero

Open Office is a passable alternative if your word-processing and presentations are not part of your professional career.  I say passable because documentation in Open Office is ... bad.  Say what you will about Microsoft's UI choices and software design, at least with their product a few seconds of quality time with their help-files will get you towards what you want to do.  With Open Office, that's not the case by a longshot.  Lack of documentation, tool tips, or stability doing anything remotely exotic feature-wise are all problems with Open Office.

That said, free is hard to beat.

open office is a great word processing altenative...for just that...standard word processing (I am not talking about the presentation or spreadsheet apps).  If that is all you need...you will be fine.  If you are really into document design, Adobe Indesign is the only way to go.  All the other bells and whistles in MS Word are really just bloated toys. 

Well... they could pay me to use it.

I actually have a fondness for writer.  I do mostly general writing/ light documentation ---tbh---I do most of the writing in a text editor and move it over to Writer for formatting.  So that's not a 40 hour a week opinion.  As I recall, it was pretty solid on   You might actually be pretty happy with how people react to impress.  I'm not saying it's 'better' than Power Point, rather you get a little love because it's definitely not power point.  In other words, if you're in a power point saturated workplace, it might make you stand out a little bit. 

As for calc, feature wise it keeps pace with Excel 03.  It's pretty much all there--pivot tables, a similar array of formulas, hideous out of the box charts.  It's totally outclassed by Excel 07 though. 

I might have to look at getting 2010, since as a student I can get it for $13.

Got it already a few weeks ago under my Microsoft TechNet subscription.  To tell you the truth I don't know if I really like it or  not, they TOTALLY changed the interface. 

The ribbon is now customizable, for those who don't know - you can ararrange the various tabs and items and add/delete/hide them as well.

"You still have to swap ribbon modes constantly and dig around for certain functions just to get stuff done, which defeats half the point of it.

Dig where? 99% of the functionality is under one of the tabs. That's not much digging. Not any more than the countless menus and dialog boxes 2003 and below had.

As far as Outlook goes . . .

I have mixed feelings.

On one hand, I'm stuck with it because I haven't replaced my Palm T|X with a smart phone yet.

On the other hand, web based email / PIM really is accessible anywhere.

But - web based email / PIM also requires 100% uptime on the internet. And, frankly, the functionality still severely lags behind downloadable clients.

IMO email and personal information management is still quite a mess, online or offline.

My biggest problem with ribbons is when I know something exists, but I simply can't find it.  In 2003 I can scan the menus and I'll usually find it pretty quickly.  With ribbons I have to... parse what I'm looking at.  I don't know about anyone else but I find that the icons are kinda visually distracting.  Also, sometimes things aren't in the ribbon I expect and sometimes they aren't even listed on a ribbon.  I've had plenty of times where I've had to click on a button to open a sub-menu or window that has the feature I'm looking for.  This is especially true in Outlook 2007.  

Off the top of my head, one function I use a lot in Outlook, that's now hidden, is the ability to edit someone else's email.  (For the record, I do this so I can highlight text.)  I dare you to try and find it in 2007.  It's there but it's not easy to find.  In 2003 it's right there smack in the middle of the Edit menu.

Later,
LAR