New PowerPoint Viewer

Microsoft doesn’t give any details as to what has changed, but there’s a new PowerPoint viewer available on the MS download site.

I recommend that you download and install the viewer on any Windows XP that doesn’t have PowerPoint installed. And it’s not a bad idea to install it on any Win PC with older versions of PowerPoint – 2007, 2003, XP – just to ensure compatibility with all of the PowerPoint features, up to and including PowerPoint 2010.

Pres Gralla gives Office 2010 two thumbs up

Preston Gralla knows his stuff. He says that Office 2010 “will truly make a difference in the way that I work.”

The main attraction, as far as I’m concerned, is the Outlook makeover that makes it far easier to cut through e-mail overload and keep up with your ever-expanding group of contacts on social networking sites.

I’m not as impressed as Pres with the Outlook improvements, but they are considerable – just as Outlook 2007 was a considerable improvement over Outlook 2003. I haven’t yet swallowed the Kool-Aid and changed to Office 2010 full-time, but I may. And if I do, there’s only one reason why: Outlook.

Ed Bott has a detailed look at how to get Office 2010 cheap. Ed’s absolutely right – if Windows 7 taught us anything, it’s that people who buy the new product early get the best prices. Nuff said.

Oh. For those of you who have asked, Ed and I are NOT doing a Special Edition Using Office 2010. I may dip my toe back in the Office writing milieu, but for now, there’s nothing firm.

Office 2010 and SharePoint 2010 now available to MSDN subscribers

Just confirming that both Office 2010 Professional Plus (in 32 and 64 bit versions) and SharePoint Server 2010 (64 bit) are up on the MSDN site. If you know someone with an MSDN subscription, you can have them get the bits there.

You’ll have to buy a license, sooner or later, of course. But the “real” RTM version is now widely available. To MSDN subscribers, anyway.

Office 2010 RTM

Stick a fork in it.

Takeshi Numoto blogs that Office 2010 has gone gold. The official launch is May 12, with shrinkwrapped product on store shelves June 15.

I’m not going to rush out and buy a copy, but Office 2010 does have some worthwhile new features – if nothing else, the File menu is back, finally. Ed Mendelson, who knows more about word processing than any human alive, has a balanced review on the PC Mag web site.

Microsoft’s official review guides just went up on the MS site.

All in all, it strikes me as a ho-hum upgrade to Office 2007, and a possibly worthwhile upgrade for Office 2003. If you can get used to the %$#@! ribbon.

Office 2010 heads to the finish line

Jevon Fark just posted details about the roll-out of Office 2010.

Starting today, consumers who purchase and activate Office 2007 will be able to download Office 2010 at no additional cost when it becomes available in June 2010.

For businesses, we will launch the 2010 set of products, including Office 2010, SharePoint 2010, Visio 2010, and Project 2010 worldwide on May 12… For consumers, Office 2010 will be available online and on retail shelves this June.

I’m still lukewarm about Office 2010, just as I was (and am) lukewarm about Office 2007. There are some significant improvements, but to me it’s hard to justify spending big bucks to change from Office 2003.

Office 2010 due on June 15, per Paul Thurrott

Paul’s WinInfo Short Takes this weekend includes this confirmation of what many of us have suspected for a long time:

(Office 2010 for Windows, meanwhile, will become generally available June 15, 2010.)

Yes, it’s a parenthetical expression, about half the way down the page, under a heading for Office 2011 for the Mac.

Office 2010 Release Candidate out

If you’re one of the select few in Microsoft’s TAP (“Technology Adoption Program”) you may have been offered a chance to run Office 2010 RC 1.

Ars Technica has the scoop:

“Microsoft made a release candidate available to members in the Technology Adoption Program (TAP),” a Microsoft spokesperson confirmed with Ars. “This is one of Microsoft’s planned milestones in the engineering process; however they do not have plans to make this new code set available broadly.”

… The Office 2010 beta that Microsoft gave out to the public three months ago was build 14.0.4536.1000 and has already been downloaded over 2 million times. Since then, and even before then, there have been many leaks of other builds; the latest one we’ve seen is build 14.0.4734.1000, which leaked out only last week

UPDATE: Neowin reports that the RC version (Build 4734.1000) is now available to all Technical Beta participants. No, if I was in the beta, I couldn’t tell you. But Neowin can.

Office 2010 pricing announced

Microsoft says that 2,000,000 people have downloaded the beta version of Office 2010. I hope they all understand that they’ll have to uninstall it before installing the real version. Anyway…

MS just announced pricing for Office 2010. The best part of the announcement: you can buy a “card” that has an activation key – no need to buy the whole stupid box, if you can beg or borrow a copy of the bits. I hope that’s the way MS will head for all of its products. (The next logical step is to encourage distribution via torrents or the newsgroups, which are infinitely more efficient and “green” than shrinkwrapped boxes.)

The fine print: if you buy a box, you can install copies of the software on two different PCs. If you get the card, you’re limited to one.

The prices:

Home & Student (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote): $149 boxed, $119 product key for one PC only. There’s a three-license Family Pack coming. After re-re-re-reading Microsoft’s announcement, it isn’t clear to me if the $149 boxed price is for the Family Pack, or if there’s a separate Family Pack product, with its own price.

Home & Business (adds Outlook): $279 boxed, $199 product key.

Pro (adds Publisher and Access): $499 boxed, $349 product key.

The Pro Academic version (which is only available through Academic outlets) is $99 for the boxed version, and there doesn’t appear to be a key-only option.

Note that there’s no “upgrade” pricing, no confusing licensing terms, no talk about “qualifying” systems, or meaningless requirements such as a “student” reside at your home. Just four options – three, if you think of Academic as an island unto its own. Bravo. Something else Microsoft has (finally!) done right.

There’s some bogus wording that the two-license allowance is only for “your PCs” – and I bet we see something about the Family Pack only being installed on three “Family” PCs. We’ll have to see if Microsoft attaches some bogus restrictions to the definition of “your” and/or “Family.” But in general, they’re headed in the right direction.

Okay, so call me old-fashioned, but I still don’t see anything that really grabs me in Office 2010. Maybe working with it for a while will change my tune.

Meanwhile, there’s a fire sale going on for Office 2007.

UPDATE: Ed Bott has a good analysis of the pricing and the major changes it represents.