Though anyone with basic needs will do fine with free alternatives, Word 2010 makes an extremely strong case for itself. It has an ease of use and depth of features in an entirely different league to those it nominally competes with, giving those with genuinely demanding requirements more and better executed tools than ever before.Read full review
This has got to be a fix?! 10/10 for every product, including the ones other trusted sources have major complaints about like Outlook 2010? Suspicious?!
The main problem with Office 2007 and what will (I'm guessing) be a similar issue with 2010 is backwards compatability. Unless both you and the person sharing the document have the same 2010/2007 version of Office, most of the fancy-pants features can't be used, rendering the upgrade largely pointless. We've had big issues where I work as the rollout of 2007 hasn't been coordinated properly. Consequently you have to save everything in Compatability mode in order to ensure that everyone can use it, regardless of the version of Office they're using.
I know you touched on this in the article, but to me it's a big problem. I can't see how can Microsoft expect a large take-up of a piece of software that is so widely used but isn't backwards compatable wiith previous versions. Why would a company upgrade to 2010 and risk work-flow disruption caused by compatability issues, when at the end of the day 2000 et all offer most "every-day" users all the features they need.
It's not as if they can cash-in on all those people who don't have some kind of word processor installed on their PC, as I'd guess that's a pretty darn small market...
@TheEvilGenius: How can you expect 100% backwards compatibility? They wouldn't be able to add any new features then, just make the program easier to use - which wouldn't be much of an update!
After 7 years you have to expect some new additions and from glancing through this review there's a lot. For the most part it's compatible and the fact you can save in older formats (or now use the Web version) means that it should be easier than ever for people to work on the same document.
The use of the XML based files should mean that any new features not covered by Office 2007 shouldn't prevent the docs or spreadsheets or whatever from rendering properly. They'll "fail" nicely, if you see what I mean. The previous backward compatibility with '03 was fixed very promptly by MS with a patch, so I think you are making too much of this, really.
Back to the main review, I was disappointed to read how limiting the online capabilities are. I was wondering recently whether to embrace google docs more, or wait out for office 2010 web apps. This has made my mind up to go with Google, although I'm sure the online capabilities of both suites will be massively improved over the coming years.
@HK Agreed - Whilst annoying as it is something has to give or we'll just be stuck in the year 2000 in terms of office software.
Glad to hear you mentioned the HP tm2 - any chance of reviewing it :-). I had heard that they have improved the handwriting recognition in onenote, which in 2007 wasn't very good compared to the tablet input panel in windows 7.
You forgot to mention that you can get a fourth version of Office 2010: Office Professional Academic 2010. Its only £49.99, the one I shall be buying.
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