Consumers can now purchase Office 2010 at more than 35,000 retail stores, at online stores, as well as directly from Microsoft (
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Microsoft reported that in the next year, more than 100 million PCs will ship with Office 2010 preloaded.
“For the first time, people can purchase a Product Key Card at retail to activate Office 2010 preloaded on new PCs,” said Stephen Elop, president, Microsoft Business Division. “For those who want 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.”
From a survey of Office 2010 beta users, Microsoft found that 75 percent say they plan to buy Office 2010 within six months. The Office 2010 beta program had more than 9 million downloads — more than six times the size of the 2007 Microsoft Office beta program — indicating strong consumer interest in Office 2010.
“Following the great response to the Office 2010 beta and the success of Windows 7, we predict this will be the biggest consumer release of Office, ever,” Elop said.
Microsoft today declined to release sales figures on Office 2010, as did Best Buy.
But even without the numbers behind him, Best Buy spokesperson Justin Barber did have something to say about Office 2010.
"Office 2010 offers noticeable improvements in the computing experience that we think people will definitely notice and appreciate. From what we're hearing, consumers especially like the new features that make content easier to manage and create, and that enable users to connect with one another for viewing and editing documents from virtually anywhere.”
Office is available in 10 languages today and will expand to 94 languages. The three versions of Office 2010 include: Office Home and Student 2010, Office Home and Business 2010, and Office Professional 2010.
Office 2010 includes:
* New video and photo editing features.
* Ability to add text effects and table formatting in Word 2010.
* Ability to reveal trends in data with Sparklines in Excel 2010.
* Advanced e-mail management in Outlook 2010 and the new Outlook Social Connector help users stay productive and in touch with personal and business networks.
* Ability to work with other users more efficiently using new co-authoring in Word 2010, PowerPoint 2010 and OneNote 2010.
* Ability to deliver presentations over the Web with new PowerPoint Broadcast Slideshow.
* With Office 2010 and the Office Web Apps — the online companions to Word, PowerPoint, Excel and OneNote — users have the option to save documents directly from Office 2010 to Windows Live SkyDrive, then view, edit and share those documents in the cloud.
* The Office Web Apps preserve the look and feel of Office documents, so content and formatting are not compromised while moving between the PC, phone and browser.
* Users can do editing of Office documents and take notes on the go, or work on Office documents stored on their phone or attached to an e-mail, with Office Mobile 2010.
More than 1 billion PCs worldwide have Office software installed, making it the most widely used productivity suite in the world, said Mike Hurt, senior vice president of comScore (
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In a related matter, Office 2010 was released to business customers last month. Along with the new Office edition, SharePoint 2010, Visio 2010 and Project 2010 are also now available for all business customers.
Ed Silverstein is a contributing editor for TMCnet's InfoTech Spotlight. To read more of his articles, please visit his columnist page.
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