Microsoft(r) Office 2010 unleashed!

Want to get your hands on Microsoft(r) Office 2010? Here are several vendors selling the "Home and Student edition with a 3 computer license for $150!

See what's in the package here at Microsoft's(r) website (US Pricing)

(That's about 3 computer licenses for $50 per computer!)

Bestbuy(r) Link | Staples(r) Link | OfficeDepot(r) link

OfficeTutor is not affiliated to any of the above vendors. Every Vendor (especially OfficeDepot(r) has other deals associated with buying Office2010 that will add to your savings!

For license with just 1 PC, and if you just want the product card (office software has to be preloaded in your new PC or downloaded to your current one), Staples(r) charges about $120 here

Office 2010: Do You Need It?

Microsoft(r) Office 2010 apparently boasts 100 new features. But are they worth the upgrade costs?

Microsoft(r) has kept the Ribbon bar it introduced in Office 2007. Love it or hate it, their studies have shown that people produce less errors this way. It was essentially created to help you make fewer mistakes and become more efficient in productivity.

But with the official release of Office 2010 looming over the horizon, and being that it's been 3 years since Office 2007 was released, Microsoft(r) has to convince you to make the switch.

Wired News has an excellent review where the author points out that while the software is more polished, it may not convince enough people to make the switch.

Some reasons you may want to upgrade to Microsoft(r) Office 2010

1. Better integration with Office Online (Office Web Apps)
2. Customizable Ribbon Bar
3. Better Manageable layout for Outlook 2010 eg. "Conversation View" (If you are a Gmail email user, the feature is comparable to the way Gmail displays emails, keeping a group of related emails together as one conversation).

Visit the Wired News Review.

These are just a few of the improvements, but these are like to be some of the changes that will stand out the most.

Microsoft(r) is running a special offer right now, if you've purchased Office 2007 between March 5, 2010 and September 30, 2010, you qualify for a free upgrade to Office 2010. Details Here.

Office 2010: Web Apps Review

Office fanatics are closely watching the development of Office 2010 web apps, which is Microsoft Office's answer to GoogleDocs, which allows sharing of a document among multiple users (for those unfamiliar, this is referred to as "online collaboration").

Google Docs, at the time of this article, allows you to see a history of "revisions." This is a useful feature if you have multiple users putting in data into one document. To do the same with the desktop version of Microsoft Office involves either third-party software (such as HyperOffice), or the even Microsoft Sharepoint.

Web Apps however does allow collaboration. More will be said in a later review. But feel free to try it out for yourself.

Link to Web Apps download BETA (as of March 6th, 2010)
Note: There are 2 versions, for School use, and for Organizations.

PCPro has a brilliant and brief review on Microsoft Office 2010 web apps.

Microsoft is a little late to the game of providing online office software applications at competitive pricing (in Google's case, FREE!, can't beat that). Is Office 2010 Web Apps their way of catching up? Probably.

It could also be their way of preventing loss of a customer base that is moving towards the growing trend of document creation and use exclusively online. Why would someone buy Office 2010 if all they need office software for is the very basics in functionality?

Then again, there is always its ever-looming free desktop software counter-part, OpenOffice.org