Tag Archives | Office Suites

The last bit of Microsoft’s Office 2010 rollout is now in place: The suite upgrade has gone on sale at retail stores, and is now being shipped in a pre-installed version on new PCs. (Even if the Windows machine you buy doesn’t include a paid-for copy of Office 2010, chances are pretty high that it includes a trial version which can be unlocked, or used indefinitely in a dumbed-down, ad-supported Starter mode.

For people who care about office-suite upgrades at all, I think Office 2010 is a good bet overall–especially the $150 Home and Student edition, which can be installed on three machines simultaneously, providing impressive bang for the buck as long as you don’t need Outlook.

But I seem to be way less impressed with the new Office Web Apps than the average tech pundit (here’s Walt Mossberg’s cautiously positive take). I get that Microsoft sees them as a complement to traditional Office rather than a substitute, and appreciate the much-better-than-average file compatibility and rendering fidelity. But too many very, very basic features are absent: For instance, I don’t quite understand how anyone could release a presentation app in 2010 that doesn’t let you draw a square or circle.

I attended an Office launch event last night, and Microsoft executives said they plan to beef up the Office Web Apps on an ongoing basis; I’ll keep tabs on further developments. And maybe the company’s contention that the current versions provide most of the features that most real people want is closer to being right than I think it is–if you try out the Web Apps (or Office 2010 itself) I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Microsoft has announced that the consumer versions of its new Office Web Apps–browser-based versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote–are now available to anyone who cares to check them out. They’re headquarted at office.live.com, and you need a Live ID to access them.

I wrote about the Office Web Apps when I covered Office 2010 a few weeks ago. Certain things about them are impressive–mainly the desktop-esque look and feel and much-better-than-average support for Microsoft’s own file formats. Overall, though, I found them frustratingly rudimentary: Years after Google and Zoho jumpstarted the category of Web-based suites, Microsoft is entering the market that lacks features as basic as the ability to move elements around on the page. They’re far more interesting as adjuncts to Office 2010–a pretty solid upgrade–than as a self-contained competitor to other online productivity packages. Maybe that was Microsoft’s intention all along.

If you give them a try, let us know what you think.

At an event this morning in New York, Microsoft is formally launching Office 2010, its accompanying Office Web Apps, and the SharePoint 2010 collaborative platform. The hoopla today is aimed at business customers–consumers won’t be able to buy Office in retail stores or get it preinstalled on PCs until June 15th, and while Microsoft hasn’t guaranteed a timetable for the consumer versions of the Web Apps, it says it expects them to arrive at the same time as the desktop suite.

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