Guest Author
Office 2010 is just smoothing out the 2007 rough edges, everyone I know (outside of the Frisco Beltway) still complains about the ribbon, as such, might take End Users well into 2011 or 2012 to get used to it.
In the Redmond-haze, the Ribbon is always this massive run-away success, but the number of Office XP and 2003′s I see, anecdotally, tells me otherwise. The rare Office 2007 installation just means a new computer with a 60 day trial, that ends up with some local geek installing OpenOffice. But, Addintools Technology, makers of Classic Menu, will rejoice.
Office 2010 (Beta 1)
Word – Cosmetic, misc. new collaboration stuff that no one ever ends up using. Better search, or rather working search. Nothing here worth even writing about.
Outlook – Conversation view (gmailish) as default, which many might like. I don’t. Emails aren’t forum threads to me. Also has a track/spy MailTips, which might be of use for Corporates. If you live in Exchange all day, and Outlook is your world, then some nice polish, for everyone else, no dice. A Quicksteps wizard supposed to help navigate through the confusing UI mish-mash, it doesn’t (yet).
OneNote finally grows up at bit, this app been a great idea but no-mans-island for far too long. It’s now graduated from Jr. High. Same old OneNote, just doesn’t look out-of-place anymore. Ribbon WORKS for Tablet Users, anyone else, not so sure.
Excel (or rather the 64 bit version) – Impressive and powerful, lots of juice here, best of the lot, but where they should have been yearsago.
PowerPoint – half to the point of functionality with video and all. But only half. The “video editing” is clumsy at best. Complete with the usual PowerPoint generic spaz that the world will have to suffer with, more read-the-text presentations, ahoy.
Publisher – Ribbon and just the usual extra dose of clip-artish bloat. School teachers and such like love this. Indesign or Scribus for everyone else. Snore.
Access – Expression-style input, better for odd data. Seems more a
Service Pack over full-upgrade. Doesn’t seem hardly any difference. Maybe I am missing something? Dulls-ville.
InfoPath – Ribbon UI. And I am sure more, but who really uses this?
