Moving Office
The latest iteration of Microsoft's productivity suite - Office 2010 - was made available to worldwide retail today, accompanied by a major advertising campaign.
As well offering Office 2010 through 35,000 retailers worldwide, as well as e-tail, Microsoft is selling it direct at office.com and even offering what we believe to be a 60-day free trial, although details of the nature of the trial are hard to find.
On top of all this, don't forget Microsoft is offering two free versions of Office 2010: the online one that anyone with a Windows Live account can use, and Office Starter - the basic version that replaces Microsoft works. The latter is expected to be pre-installed on the vast majority of Windows PCs together with a full version of Office that requires a product key to activate.
"Working with major retail partners and PC makers, we've made dramatic changes in the way we deliver Office 2010 to give consumers more buying choice, making it easier than ever to unlock the power of Office on new and existing PCs," said Stephen Elop, president of Microsoft's business division.
"For the first time, people can purchase a Product Key Card at retail to activate Office 2010 preloaded on new PCs. For those who want to download Office 2010 direct from Office.com for an existing PC, the new Click-to-Run technology will have them up and running in a matter of minutes."
Here are the seven biggest reasons Microsoft is saying you should get Office 2010:
1) Outlook Social Connector. Most of us spend the majority of our working day with e-mail. But we also love the connection to family, friends and colleagues that social networking sites provide. What if you could merge your inbox with your social networks? With Outlook Social Connector, you can get a people-centric view of e-mail and see the most recent status updates, wall posts, photos, attachments and appointments for the people you care about the most. Whether you like Facebook, Windows Live, LinkedIn or MySpace, the Outlook Social Connector gives you an aggregated view into your social networking life.
2) Linked Notes in OneNote. OneNote is the digital notebook darling that many Office users just can't live without. Some call it the ‘hidden gem' within Office, because it changes the way people work by capturing text, video, audio and other content types in one single location. OneNote 2010 gets even better, with Linked note-taking - which lets you ‘dock' OneNote to the side of your computer screen, take notes on a presentation, and map those notes in the presentation you've just seen. Whether you're at school, remodelling a home or simply capturing notes from a client call, OneNote is a great application with unlimited potential to help you get things done.
3) Sparklines in Excel. Excel fans love the application not for the data organization, but for what the data tells them. Charts can be great for telling a story, but the newest feature in Excel - Sparklines - can make your numbers and figures even more exciting. Sparklines are charts that fit into a single cell to show a trend at-a-glance. Eighty-three percent of Office 2010 beta users agree Sparklines make it easier to visualize and gain insight from data.
4) Photo editing in Word. Did you know one in three people include pictures in their Word documents? Office 2010 now has built-in photo editing features, which make it easier than ever to import snapshots from the Web, edit them, and add visual effects in your document.
5) Video and broadcast capabilities in PowerPoint. People are using multimedia more than ever to communicate ideas. PowerPoint 2010 gives video a first class seat, with the option to embed video directly in presentations and add stylistic effects. PowerPoint also has a great new broadcast feature, where you can present a slideshow with dynamic transitions and animations to an audience of one or 100, clear across the other side of the world - even if your audience doesn't have PowerPoint.
6) Office Web Apps. Office Web Apps help you work on your documents from virtually anywhere, using Windows Live SkyDrive. Get things done when you're away from your "workspace" by creating documents in Office 2010, save them to SkyDrive, and view and edit with Web Apps anywhere you have Internet access. Web Apps make it easy to collaborate with friends, colleagues and family.
7) A Ribbon you can personalise. The improved Ribbon in Office 2010 not only appears in all of the apps, but lets you access your favourite commands quickly, and customize or create tabs to match your individual work style.
