Three years have passed since the last version of Office was released, so naturally it's time for Microsoft to convince you that you need a new one.
Office 2010 arrives, heralding more than 100 new and improved features. The suite on the whole is compelling but, in typical Office fashion, has more software than any sane person could possibly need. It also boasts integration with Microsoft's much-ballyhooed Web Apps, a potential Google Docs competitor that lets you create and edit documents using a free web-based interface.
The overall look and feel of Office 2010 is similar to Office 2007, so if you've become accustomed to the "ribbon" (Microsoft says its studies show it saves users lots of time and prevents mistakes from being made), you'll have no trouble transitioning to Office 2010. In fact, the ribbon has now been extended to the entire Office lineup, and it can finally be customized, a long overdue feature.
Outlook is the most upgraded weapon in the Office arsenal. The biggest switch is the new Conversation View, and once you start using it you'll wonder how you ever got on without it. Put simply, it lumps all replies to a message into a single item in the message list, eliminating the inbox full of "Re:" this and "Re:" that. If you need it, a twisty lets you see every message in the thread with a single click. Sick of it? Click the Ignore button and you'll never see a reply to that thread again. It's more intelligent and more capable than anything Gmail currently has.
The little things Microsoft has done to Outlook are just as welcome, like a much richer to-do bar (the rightmost pane), better search and Quick Steps, which are basically e-mail management macros built into the app. The social networking built into Outlook is, for now, not even half-baked — it's maybe quarter-baked — but it's a sign of interesting things to come once the proper Facebook and MySpace hooks are rolled out. On the other hand, Outlook's integrated spam filter is still not quite fully cooked. It's hard to believe that after all these years Microsoft still can't nail a decent spam filter. Our advice? Microsoft should simply give up and retire it at this point.
This edition has substantial PowerPoint upgrades, most visibly with an integrated but rudimentary video-editing system right in the app. Dropping a movie into a slide show is now easy, and while you can't do complicated edits like dubbing in multiple audio tracks or crossfading from one film to another, it's probably good enough for the average PowerPoint user. Basic image editing — also inline with your document — is baked into the whole Office suite, too, and it's powerful enough for the way most users will need to work with it.
Microsoft perhaps overreaches with its attempt to outdo third-party conferencing tools like WebEx. You can now take PowerPoint to the web with a feature that lets you turn presentations into web-viewable slide shows using any browser. It works as advertised, but only if you save your file to a Windows Live folder and the people you want to share with all have Windows Live logins — a real obstacle. Performance is lackluster as well.