The Office 2010 release date has been confirmed as June 2010, with the beta release available now. It has interface changes, bug fixes, one secret new feature – and although it's still a long way from being finished, it shows much more clearly than the technical preview what you'll be waiting for.
Like Windows 7, the Office line-up has gone on a diet; instead of six different versions, there are just three (for home users).
Office Home and Student 2007 sold a copy on Amazon every 90 seconds at its peak last year; the 2010 version has the same apps (Word, Excel, PowerPointand the under-rated OneNote) and the new Home and Business version has those apps, plus Outlook.
Office Professional 2010 includes Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, Outlook, Access and Publisher. There's a free version of Office that you'll only get on new PCs called Office Starter. This replaces the ageing Microsoft Works and gives you versions of Excel and Word without all the business features, plus a small ad for Office on the task pane (that doesn't go away).
NEW ICONS: Office 2010 intros a new interface, new icons – and a secret new feature in Outlook
There are also new ways of buying Office; you can buy a "product card" with a licence key to unlock a trial copy of Office on a new PC (particularly useful for PCs with no optical drive) or you can install a streamed version called Click-to-Run.
We tested the business version, Office Professional Plus 2010 which has Access, Excel, SharePoint Workspace (the Groove replacement with added SharePoint features), OneNote, Outlook, PowerPoint, Publisher, Word and InfoPath (Visio and Project are still separate apps).
Some of the changes from the technical preview are small; others are more significant.
HOME AND PRO: The beta is the full Office Professional Plus version, but most home users will want Office Home and Student, Office Home and Business – or the free Office Starter on new PCs
We also looked at the Windows Mobile apps, and the business versions of the Office Web apps.
The Windows Live Office Web apps aren't in the beta but Microsoft tells us that the Excel and PowerPoint Web apps available now are feature complete and the Word and OneNote Web apps will have the same functionality as the business versions.
The rest of the web apps will be finished with the rest of Office 2010, in the first half of next year.
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vandy
January 9th
1. Outlook seems to be the most important part of Office 2010. I couldn't explain otherwise why everyone around me is so fascinated by the new version. Yes the people pane is very interesting, yes the social connector saves time and is very interactive. But also yes the search is still not the best one. The search of Outlook 2010 finally convinced me to buy lookeen, a search tool I was using for 14-days but was reluctant to pay money for it after the free trial. But without the prospect of a better future I decided to buy it to save time and energy.
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