Office 2010 Hits Release to Manufacturing Milestone

I'm probably not going to purchase it, but I am interested in testing it out to see what new it brings over 2007.

I've been using the 2010 Beta for several months now and I like it. I might actually purchase 2010. I figured I owe it to MS to buy a copy since I've obtained the last 5 releases for free one way or another

i haven't noticed that much difference for 2007 I'll probably roll back to that when the tech preview quits working

No thanks. I noticed the interface changes, but the functionalities are all essentially the same as with Office 2007. I'll skip this version.

until they have an option (an option not the default) to kill ribon and bring back the old file menu interface... the whole new thing for excel is stupid beyond stupid that don't allow you to easily change aspects of the graph, and instead of playing around with it i reloaded office 2k3 to finish my school work.

Looks like you'll be using Office 2003 for a long time then. They're not going to bring back the old file menus. Time to move on.

Using the 2010 beta myself. At work we're still using Office 2003 but the number of Office 2k7 docs popping up with 2k7 specific features is increasing. We will most likely be upgrading to 2010 in the near future.

As for upgrading from 2k7 to 2k10...I'm not sure it'd be worth it. Honestly there aren't enough new features IMO to warrant an upgrade. Then again some of the new Excel features could be attractive to some, and Sharepoint 2k10 has some attractive new features as well.

are they changing all their extensions again? xlsy, docy, maybe?

I'd rather stick with open office.

Nope. I've been using the beta (liking it a lot), and the extensions are the same as Office 2007.

I like OpenOffice alright, but MS Office has more features, a nicer interface (I like the Ribbon), and most importantly for me, a huge, searchable clipart collection. OpenOffice (even w/Openclipart) simply can't match MS Office's collection. I use those all the time to decorate birthday cards, kids use it to print up animal pictures for school science problems, etc. It's much better than poring through Google Images and still having to worry about copyrights.

The changes to the file name extensions were due to them being completely new types of files based on XML. That hasn't changed this time around, and probably will never happen again...it's also not something that I would say was a bad thing.

wish they MS would get a preorder price like they had with windows 7, $49.00 yeah, then im on board.

Yes. I will.
I'll keep office 2003 & 2007 + Open Office on my test machine for dev purpose, but 2010 is definitely going on my main computer (currently has 2007).
About the debate OpenOffice vs MS Office... well, i think they are just 2 different products and both have a market as they fulfill different sets of needs/requirements. Now, for my needs, it's MS Office; cannot do with OO.

i understand the change and why it was necessary, but never say never when speaking about computers. you will look dumb in five years.

For word processing and basic spreadsheets i can mostly agree. For highly complex excel documents, nope. For presentation, not quite as impressive (although Apple's keynote blows PPT away). Access is easily replaced by other apps, but not if you need integration with other software/people. Visio can't be replaced, nor can project, and full native SharePoint integration alone is worth the cost of office vs free alternatives to most companies that use project teams for any efforts. Outlook's Exchange integration is simply bettter than any competing offering. Also native integration with SCCM deployment tools and Microsoft monitoring solutions, rights management, and more, very important.

generic home users, sure freeware alternatives work. True business application use, sorry, Microsoft costs more, but everything else gets cheaper and more productive using it well in excess of the cost.

I have the beta but the 2007 and 2010 was a push for me twords openoffice

$200.00 to $400.00 for something I can get for free?? (OpenOffice)
I already own M$ Office 2003. I see nothing new in Office 2010 that would compell me to shell out $300.00 for it. Of course M$ will probably come out with a patch that will make it so that Office 2003 can't run under Windows7.

READY for my copy when it hits the retail shelf!

Right now there are deals to buy Office 2007 for $79.95 and get a free upgrade to Office 2010 plus for free. I understand many like Open Office, that is for people who don't do more than type up a simple document to print out or open basic presentation or spreadsheet files. It still has a long way to go to match up with Office and the features it has. I guess it just depends on what you need nothing more than that.

Office '97 works great! Thanks though.

Long life to Clippy!

I have tested Office 2010's beta for a while and it works quite well. Outlook is now on par with the rest of the suite and has some nice features to track correspondences much better.

Amazon apparently has some serious discounts on Office 2010 if you get a product keycard instead of the physical editions. The prices seem pretty good to me given that we are talking about full versions here and not upgrade versions.

I saw a blog about these price comparisons at
http://www.uberi.com

I went ahead and order a copy for my own home use. Got the Home & Student version since I don't know PowerPoint for my home PC and the work laptop already has PowerPoint.

ill get it at school for like 25 dollars or something.

I tested out the 2010 Beta for a while but didn't really find anything compelling about it. I find I prefer the interface of Openoffice as it is quite close to MS Office 2003 and earlier, rather than ribbon. Personally the last version I bought was Office XP as 2003 was nearly identical. If I had a need for sharepoint or exchange server connections I would buy it. All I need an office suite for is writing the occasional letter, recipe, fax cover page or generating an occasional spreadsheet for my business.

Openoffice has it's problems, most notably not being able to tab through a cell when it is highlighted for auto-completion. Then there is the lack of clip art and templates but there are many packs of each available for free.

gotta say that office 2010 works much better than 2007. get it

I checked out that Product Key Card deal, and it is good... for 1 PC. The standard retail Home & Student edition is licensed for up to 3 PCs, so a much better deal if you have more than one machine (like me).

They should put the RTM on Technet.... =(

As I am using 2007, I don't think that I will be upgrading to 2010. Too little changes for maybe too much.

Maybe someday but not now.

It's exciting to try something new. I like to buy this if I can afford, I hope it doesn't cost too much.

considering i just got 07, no

The file extensions won't change but the actual file structure will. Office Open XML won't be finalised until the next version of Office. Yes, they need 3 versions of Office to roll out a new file format that could have been replaced by the OpenDocument Format instead

I'm more interested in Visual Studio 2010. I only realised yesterday that it was released a short time ago