Microsoft Office 2010 review

Office 2010 is the latest release of Microsoft's widely used application suite, and the first to ship following the debut of Windows 7. This version adds a number of enhancements in areas such as collaboration and features that boost productivity for specific tasks in applications such as Excel and Outlook.

This release also includes the first real browser-based versions of the chief Office applications, which Microsoft expects to be used in a complementary role for ad-hoc viewing or editing, but which must also be seen as a move to stem adoption of rival tools such as Google Docs.

Overall, however, Office 2010 seems like an evolutionary upgrade from the last release, Office 2007. The latter introduced major changes in the user interface and document file formats that were used in earlier versions.

In this version, there are slight changes to the file formats, with Word, Excel and PowerPoint saving new documents in the Transitional form of ISO 29500 (the ISO standard of the Office OpenXML specifications). However, the vast majority of users should experience no compatibility issues, according to Microsoft.

Office 2010 still supports PCs with Windows XP SP3, as well as Windows Vista and Windows 7. Any PC capable of running Office 2007 will meet the system requirements for Office 2010, Microsoft said.

An Office 2010 rollout is therefore likely to cause fewer difficulties compared with Office 2007, and we expect many large organisations, particularly those with Software Assurance licensing, to upgrade sooner or later.

For smaller companies, however, the £239.99 price tag for the Office Home and Business 2010 edition may prove too steep, especially when rival suites are available at below the £100 mark, or even for free in the case of the open-source OpenOffice.org.

For those who have been running the beta version of Office 2010, the final applications show few changes. We also found that in many cases, applications such as Word open significantly faster than in previous Office releases.

The core Office applications - Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook and OneNote - all now feature the ribbon user interface and Backstage View. The latter is where users go to save, print or share a document, and which also shows information related to the file.

Word
Word seems little different than the version in Office 2007, but it does feature some enhancements such as OpenType typography support and visual text effects such as gradient fills.

Image editing tools now allow users to apply effects such as paint strokes to embedded pictures, and cut out the background behind an object.

Cutting and pasting text is also improved in Word, with options on the right-click menu to preserve formatting or insert as unformatted text, with an in-place preview of each option.