I’ve been researching Office 2010 lately. Based on my first impression, I’m pretty excited about adopting it when it is released in the first half of 2010. As a trainer for Versitas, I can see so many fun ways to integrate the new elements into a great “new features” class.
I must admit that I am an early adopter. I started using the full desktop version of Office 2007 as soon as it was in beta version. It did take a little time to get used to the updated interface without my memorized menus, but I really like how user friendly it is! I had not had the time to play with any pre-release version of Office 2010 yet so this was my first go-round with it.
I have to start off with the WebApps version change. Office 2010 Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote applications will now be available to use (with limited functionality) in a web browser (Explorer, Firefox, and Safari). Here comes cloud computing! Users will only need to use SharePoint 2010 or a Windows Live Account. For those people who use a netbook, this would work really well because it wouldn’t require a great deal of hard drive space. The WebApps are available to anyone who purchases Office 2010 or free to those who don’t mind having an advertising pane on their screen.
Another new feature, called BackStage, replaces the File menu. It allows you to integrate tasks across multiple documents like printing and sharing. If BackStage works like it is supposed to, I’m going to love this facet of Office 2010. As someone who integrates documents across the Office applications, I’m very much in favor of making it easier to share or print by putting everything in one place and under one tab.
Office 2010 will be installed much faster with what Microsoft calls Click-to-Run. It will be an on-demand installation so that only the features that are needed will be initially installed. Whenever you need a feature that has not been enabled yet, you just click to quickly download that element. The element activation will take less time because they have streamlined the install process. Most of all, you don’t take up space on your machine with extras that you are not using.
New computers will come packaged with Office 2010 Starter version. It will not have full functionality and won’t include all of the applications. There will also be a fixed advertising pane within it.
