"The best addition to the 2010 PowerPoint application is the embed videos feature with its customisable frames, animation and video styles."
Rosie Khdir
The release of Microsoft Professional 2010 has caused a great deal of excitement in the business world as it looks set to make communication and organisation tons easier.
What we like best
In the 2010 edition of Word users can bring documents and presentations to life using the new picture editing tool which includes colour and correction galleries, colour tone, sharpen and soften, brightness and contrast tools.
Excel 2010 users can benefit from the new Sparklines feature, which gives you a visual summary of data using miniature charts that fit within a cell to show you the progression of information in the row – a real time saver. It also features a Web-based co-authoring application, allowing you and others to edit the same document simultaneously.
The best addition to the 2010 PowerPoint application is the embed videos feature with its customisable frames, animation and video styles. It also makes collaborative work easy by allowing co-authoring of documents and a broadcast slide show feature which lets you showcase your presentation online to those who may not have PowerPoint.
The 2010 version of Outlook is all about staying connected and organisation. It has an Outlook Social Connector which lets you connect to you social networking sites, as well as an improved Quick Steps feature (a more rapid search tool).
Publisher 2010 is also available on Microsoft Office Professional 2010 and is equipped with all sort s of new typography, caption and preview tools. It also comes with the same photo editing as Word and its method of converting files to PDF or XPS have been greatly enhanced.
The biggest perk, is that all these applications feature a fully customisable ribbon, to make your work space just the way you like it.
What we like least
This is the most expensive of the 2010 suites, obviously because it comes packed with more features, but for some users the cheaper Home and Business suite would suffice.
As with the other editions, the interface and ribbon found in the earlier 2007 suites may be hard to get used to for new users.
Microsoft Office Professional 2010 is a great package filled with simple time-saving tools and exciting new features. It is a comprehensive upgrade, but comes at a price – only purchase this package if you will get full use out of all of its features.
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Features
NEW: Dynamic 3D charts and powerful new design tools to bring your presentations to life
Add On
Available as an upgrade
Download or CD
Both
Compatible with
Windows
System Requirements
- 3 Gb of hard disk space
- 256 Mb of RAM
- Windows XP
- 500 MHz processor
- 1024 x 768 resolution
The announcement that Microsoft Office 15 is already being worked on, before Office 14 (aka Office 2010) has even started to ship has led us to ponder what we know so far about the latest update.
First off the definite release date is June 2010, although a beta version is already about and available to download if you feel the need to have a play.
Microsoft is already on the offensive and gearing up the presales mechanism. For business customers there’s a 20 per cent discount on Office Professional Plus 2007 with a free upgrade to Office 2010 in June when it launches.
It’s the same promotion that worked wonders with the release of Windows Vista and Windows 7 and there’s no reason why it shouldn’t shift units for the new Office.
There are no massive changes with Office 2010, as there was from Office 2003 to Office 2007, where the introduction of the ribbon or tab bar started months of achingly boring arguments.
In terms of appearance it’s really only been tweaked and the appearance cleaned up.
The good news for the ribbon-haters out there is that it’s far more customizable, allowing to add and remove tabs. But it’s still going to be there, so get used to it.
The file menu is back by popular demand and the office button is only on backstage.
There are new data analysis tools in Excel called Sparkline, and Powerpivot which allows you to rapidly scroll through millions of lines of data.
Powerpoint users can now insert and customise videos, allowing you to “trim, add fades and effects, or bookmark key points in the video to call attention to selected scenes” according to the Microsoft marketing spiel.
In Outlook there’s conversation view which picks out all the threads of a message, and highlights which haven’t been replied too. There will also be toolkits allowing you to link to Facebook, MySpace, Twitter etc., so that you can see updates and news all in one place.
The overriding aim is that it will work across three mediums; the cloud, your PC and a smartphone to bring a new level of connectivity.
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