After announcing in October last year that they will be coming up with an online version of their Office suite, the day has finally come for Microsoft. The blogosphere is buzzing that today is the launch of Microsoft 2010 and that the new offering is free. Microsoft offering something for free is always a welcome news.
A word of caution though, since this new offering is a web app, a stable browser is needed. That would mean, using…
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Office 2010 Hits Major Milestone and Enters Technical Preview
Microsoft showcases new product capabilities and announces Office Web applications will be available to nearly half a billion people at launch.
NEW ORLEANS, La. – July 13, 2009 – Today, at its Worldwide Partner Conference, Microsoft Corp. announced Office 2010, SharePoint Server 2010, Visio 2010 and Project 2010 have reached the technical preview engineering milestone. Starting today, tens of thousands of people will be invited to test Office and Visio as part of the Technical Preview program.
“Office 2010 is the premiere productivity solution across PCs, mobile phones and browsers,” said Chris Capossela, senior vice president, Microsoft Business Division. “From broadcast and video editing in PowerPoint, new data visualization capabilities in Excel and co-authoring in Word, we are delivering technology to help people work smarter and faster from any location using any device.”
Office 2010 and related products will deliver innovative capabilities and provide new levels of flexibility and choice that will help people:
• Work anywhere with Office Web applications—the lightweight, Web browser versions of Word, PowerPoint, Excel and OneNote-that provide access to documents from anywhere and preserve the look and feel of a document regardless of device.
• Better Collaborate with co-authoring in Word, PowerPoint and OneNote, and advanced email management and calendaring capabilities in Outlook, including the option to “ignore” unwanted threads.
• Bring ideas to life with video and picture editing, broadcast capability in PowerPoint, easy document preparation through the new Microsoft Office Backstage view, and new Sparklines in Excel to visualize data and spot trends more quickly;
Microsoft also announced that it is streamlining the number of Office editions from eight to five and enhancing each edition with additional applications and features. The company also announced that Office Web applications will be available in three ways: through Windows Live, where more than 400 million consumers will have access to Office Web applications at no cost; on-premises for the more than 90 million Office annuity customers; and via Microsoft Online Services, where customers will be able to purchase a subscription as part of a hosted offering.