Redmond, Washington — It has been a long wait between Microsoft Office 2007’s retail debut on Jan. 29, 2007, and Office 2010’s arrival in stores today. The software giant on Tuesday formally pulled out the beta tag from the freshest version of its popular business productivity suite. The Redmond Vole’s latest entrée in the desktop productivity wars includes free, online versions of Word, Excel, and PowerPoint that was available at more than 35,000 retail stores around the world, from online retailers such as Amazon.com or for download through Office.com.
Certainly, with the current release of Office 2010 that is bundled with several new features and improved productivity tools all under one roof.
Stephen Elop, president of the Microsoft Business division, said Office 2010 is “the best ever productivity experience on three screens — the PC, the browser and the phone.” The biggest change to Office is a free Web-based version called Office Web Apps.
“For the first time, people can purchase a Product Key Card at retail to activate Office 2010 preloaded on new PCs,” said Elop. “For those who wish to download Office 2010 direct from Office.com for an existing PC, the new Click-to-Run technology will have them up and running in a matter of minutes,” he added.
Microsoft said that Office 2010 are being pre-loaded on desktops and laptops by computer makers such as Acer, Asus, Dell, Hewlett-Packard, Lenovo, Samsung and Sony, so people buying new PCs can purchase a key card with a number to unlock Office instead of having to buy the software on DVD and upload it.
Microsoft said that during the next one year, it expects that Office will be preloaded on more than 100 million computers and about 80 percent of computers for sale during the holidays.
The company said that every new computers from Sony, Dell, Toshiba and Hewlett-Packard will come with Office Starter, a free, lite version of Word and Excel. Users can pay to promote to the full version of Office 2010 that includes the ubiquitous spreadsheet, email, presentation and word processing programs used by tens of millions of businesses: Excel, Outlook, PowerPoint and Word, OneNote and other software.
“We have made significant changes to the way we deliver Office 2010 to give consumers more buying choice, making it easier than ever to unlock the power of Office on new and existing PCs,” said Elop, in a statement.
The screenshot below exhibits the comparison between 2007 and 2010 versions of the three oldest Office applications–Word, Excel and PowerPoint–stacked to show their “ribbon” toolbars. Aside from 2010’s use of a light-gray background and its replacement of 2007’s “Office Button” with a more-standard File menu, not much visibly distinguishes the old from the new.
Indeed, Office 2010 is available in the box, as a download, and also as preloaded software on new PCs. Also, the latest edition of Office includes a Web-hosted version aimed at countering competition from emerging “cloud” products offered by Google. Users in the U.S, UK, Canada and Ireland can now access Office Web applications through Microsoft’s Windows Live SkyDrive portal.
Businesses that buy subscriptions in volume to Office will be able to access the Office Web Apps at no extra cost. Microsoft has about 90 million such customers. It also has roughly 400 million Windows Live users, adding up to a potential installed base of almost a half billion users for Office Web.
Elop said he does not think the free Web apps version will cannibalize business from consumers who would otherwise buy Office. “We think about it as a growth opportunity,” Elop said, adding hundreds of millions of Office users are either on older or pirated versions. With the Web apps, “we can draw them into a positive experience” using Office. Google began offering a free Web-based competitor to Office four years ago and now has more than 20 million users.
The bundled, Professional edition of Office 2010 is priced at $499, while the download is $349. There is also a remarkable price difference between boxed and download delivery for other versions as well. For the Home & Student version, it’s $149 vs $119. For Home & Business, it’s $279 vs $199.
The move time and again is viewed as a response to the challenge posed by Google and others offering free online cloud-computing programs.
For more pricing details, check out the online Microsoft Office store.