It’s official. Microsoft just released Office 2010. It’s already available on laptops and PCs — and Microsoft expects more than 100 million PCs will ship with the new software pre-loaded in the next year.
“For the first time, people can purchase a product key card at retail to activate Office 2010 pre-loaded on new PCs,” said Stephen Elop, president of Microsoft’s Business Division. He said consumers who want to download Office 2010 direct from Office.com for an existing PC can get it up and running in minutes.
Inside Office 2010
What’s under the Office 2010 hood? Office 2010 offers Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook. Word 2010 now offers the ability to format tables and add extensive text effects, as well as coauthoring.
Excel 2010 reveals data trends with a function called Sparklines. PowerPoint 2010 offers new video- and photo-editing features, along with the ability to deliver presentations online with a PowerPoint Broadcast Slideshow. Also included is OneNote 2010, which makes it easier to find, organize and share docs.
Office 2010 offers new and improved e-mail management and calendaring capabilities and a new Outlook Social Connector to help users keep in touch with personal and business networks.
“Office 2010 appears faster. Outlook in particular, which in the 2007 version had a habit of hanging up on me quite a bit, now virtually never hangs up. It sometimes takes a little longer to initially boot up,” said Rob Enderle, principal analyst at the Enderle Group. “But as long as you just suspend your laptop, you can just keep on working, which I find to be an incredible productivity gain.”
The Office 2010 Opportunity
Office 2010 comes in three versions: Office Home and Student, Office Home and Business, and Office Professional. With about 1.8 billion Internet users worldwide, Microsoft is touting Office 2010 as a growth opportunity for the…