The PC Report

A few days ago Microsoft decided that it would share with the world the current status of Office 2010 on the development scale. They revealed that Office 2010 is on schedule to be released to manufacturers (RTM) sometime next month. Microsoft also revealed that they will be releasing Office 2010 to businesses on May 12 this year, around a month before the June 15 release date for the general public.

If you purchase a full copy of Office 2007 and activate it between March 5, 2010 and September 30, 2010 you will be able to download an upgrade to Office 2010 when it becomes available for free. Upon the release date of the latest Office, the price will vary between US$159 and US$499 for the boxed edition.

According to Windows watcher Paul Thurrott, Microsoft Office 2010 will be hitting general availability on June 15 this year, while insiders at Microsoft say that they will RTM Office 2010 sometime in late March/early April. Currently, Office 2010 is in the Release Candidate stage, with the RC being released to testers a few days ago.

When available, Office 2010 will be on offer in five different packages: Starter (the free version with ads), Home and Student, Home and Business, Professional and Professional Academic, with pricing ranging from US$99 to US$499. Also, if you purchase a copy of Office 2007 between March 15 and September 30 this year, you will get a free upgrade to the equivalent version of Office 2010.

Microsoft Office 2010, the next big revision of the Office line-up that in recent times we’ve been able to test thanks to the beta, has finally got it’s pricing information released. There will be two options: one is to buy the boxed set which comes with an installation CD and a product key that will work on 2 computers, and the other option is to buy just the product key on a card, that is cheaper and only works with one computer only.

The prices are as follows:

• Professional - $499 boxed, $349 for product key
• Professional Academic - $99 boxed only (only available at academic resellers)
• Home and Student - $149 boxed, $119 for product key
• Home and Business - $279 boxed, $199 for product key

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According to the latest report, Microsoft Office 2010 will be launching sometime in June 2010 for Windows, with the Mac OS X version to follow sometime later in 2010. On that day in June, six versions of the Office 2010 suite will be launching: Starter (with ads), Home and Student, Home and Business, Standard, Professional and Professional Plus. Like Windows updates, Microsoft will be launching Office with a full version and upgrade version.

Pricing is yet to be announced, however it is expected that the full version will show up on TechNet and MSDN before the street release date. Until then, you can download the public beta or check out our updated and revamped Office 2010 Beta overview.

We’ve seen a few things about Office 2010 over the year, and with the recent announcement that you can grab the Office 2010 Beta from Technet/MSDN, and shortly afterwards the general public, we couldn’t wait to get our hands on the latest update to the well known Microsoft Office branch. We do realise that this is just a beta and that the full version will be coming to us in the near future, but we still couldn’t wait to test it out.

Upgrading from Office 2007 to the 2010 beta was a breeze thanks to the installer for the beta, however it took a loooooooong time to do it on my relatively fast Intel Core 2 Quad Q9550 and 3GB of RAM. The installer appeared to get a colour refresh, with a nice yellow/white tone to match the new, all-yellow Office logo; if you remember, the Office 2007 installer was blue. Entering the key to activate Office was a bit more difficult than 2007, however we hope that they add the key input to the installer rather than buried away inside the actual applications.

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It was released to Technet and MSDN, now it’s available to anyone who wants to try it out. You can grab a copy of the Office 2010 public beta in either the Home, Business, Professional or Professional Plus suites from the Microsoft website right now.

Today Microsoft has, as expected, released the Office 2010 Beta suite to all subscribers of either Technet or MSDN. Alongside the main Microsoft Office programs such as Word, Excel, Powepoint (etc.) you can also download the 64-bit versions of the Office Web Apps – web-centric versions of the main Office applications -  if your a MSDN/Technet subscriber. No word on the 32-bit release of the Web Apps yet though.

For all those without MSDN/Technet subscriptions, it is widely expected that the public beta of Microsoft Office 2010 will go live sometime this week, but Microsoft officials have declined to give an exact date apart from saying it will be available in November. However, Microsoft has set up the download page for the beta, and it looks like they are going to make available not only Home and Business versions of the Office suite beta, but the Office Professional 2010 and Office Professional Plus 2010 betas as well.

We will give our opinions of the Office 2010 beta as soon as we get our hands on it, so keep posted at The PC Report.

As part of Office 2010 software that will be pre-loaded by the PC manufacturers on their PCs, we’re introducing Microsoft Office Starter 2010. Office Starter 2010 is a reduced-functionality, advertising-supported version of Office 2010, available exclusively on new PCs. Office Starter 2010 will provide new PC owners with immediate exposure to the Office 2010 experience on new PCs right out of the box.

Don’t we all just love to see ads pop up when we’re writing out our important documents? It looks like Microsoft is now planning this after it has ditched the frequently used Office Works for the new “advertising supported” Office 2010 Starter. OEMs can now install the entire Office 2010 suite, but in a limited free version missing many key features. People who want to buy the full Office 2010 suite can then go and buy a card to unlock the full version.

Personally I can’t think of anything worse: a terrible, limited version of Office completed with ads all over the place. OpenOffice sure is looking good now.

In true Microsoft style of late, lots of information about office 2010 has been made available early, in the form of leaked builds and videos (latest leaked build is 14.0.4302.1000). The website was even live seveal hours ago but Microsoft seem to have pulled it – lucky google cache still has it.

Take a look at these videos previewing the changes they’re making in 2010. More after the break

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