Microsoft Office 2010
Office 2010, which was made available for businesses last month, is on the retail shelves today, Tuesday, June 15, 2010. This is the first time Microsoft is also offering Web-based versions of the Office suite along with its desktop version.
The online version of Office 2010 has been available for a couple of days and can work on any computer that uses a good web browser and has internet access; although it has fewer features than the desktop software.
There are several versions of Office 2010:
- Office Home
- Office Home & Business 2010
- Student 2010
- Office Professional 2010.
- Office Mobile 2010 is also being offered and is compatible with all Windows Mobile 6.5 phones.
The full Home and Student version costs £109.99, and comes with Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote; and can be installed on up to three computers.
The Home and Business Edition is priced at £239.99 and includes all the main programs as well as Outlook 2010 e-mail.
The Professional version for businesses comes with desktop publishing program Publisher 2010 and Microsoft’s Access 2010 database, and costs £429.99.
Office 2010 can be purchased from retail stores and also along with desktops and laptops from HP, Samsung, Toshiba, Sony, Dell, Acer, Asus and Lenovo.
In a move that is being looked upon as a response to Google Docs, Microsoft has come out with two free browser-based products, the Office Web Apps and Office Starter.
Office Web Apps work only when the browser is connected to the internet, and include completely free versions of Word, PowerPoint and Excel; albeit slimmed down. That’s not all; this comes with 25 gigabytes of storage online via Windows Live. Office Starter is given away free with new PCs and has limited versions of Word and Excel. To ensure people know what they are missing from not buying the full paid version of Office 2010, Starter has a small advertisement rotating messages that remind users of what they are missing.
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Chris Capossela, Microsoft Senior Vice President said the goal behind giving the Starter free is to make it easier to sell the full version of Office, not harder. He said, “Starter and Web apps increase consumer convenience and flexibility. At the end of the day the user will still need to buy the suite.”
Prior to the launch, Microsoft ran an extensive beta testing which was hugely successful, with the beta of Office 2010 having been downloaded over 9 million times. Microsoft says this new addition to the Office family boasts of several new features that will help users create great presentations and documents, and get things done from anywhere more easily.
