Microsoft Office 2010 Professional (Disc Version)

Having used almost every edition of Office since the mid 90s, I'm usually pleased with the new features Microsoft adds in (sometimes buggy but the idea is good). I'm also an early adopter, I started on Office 2007 in November 2006 through my MSDN Subscription, so I've used that version for 3 years. What I was hoping for is exactly what I got: taking the totally new user interface of the 2007 Ribbon and making it more robust and the apps more solid. 2010 adds some very good features such as the Backstage tab to handle most file functions. The Preview and Print page is OUTSTANDING, you change Page Setup and Printer settings and see the change in a preview, then hit the big Print button and off you go. I know we sort of had that before, but this is a clean one-page solution very similar to soft-proofing in Photoshop, and to me is worth the price of admission (almost, more on that in a second).

The way Outlook now keeps track of threads (chain of Replies to an original email) really brings it up to date. You can locate one of the replies in a thread of emails and Outlook will reveal the other emails and tell you if you're not responding to the latest Reply, and give you a way to get there in one click. NICE.

Those are my favorite features so far, obviously with a suite this big youy could use it for a year and still not cover it all. See the review from Surgery100, he/she did a great breakdown of each app in the suite.

OK, why 4 stars and not 5... simply this: you have to pay full price for this version, no upgrade pricing (that I've seen) from 2007 has emerged. That's a bit stiff to swallow, I hope Microsoft changes that. At any rate, this, to me, is the best Office so far. Oh, and this version does include OneNote! The previous Pro version didn;t, and that is a big addition. If you haven't used OneNote, I highly suggest you look into it, you will not find a better way to store all of your info and notes and lists and plans and screen shots and... you get the idea.

Like most, we have been MS Office users for many years, and have always upgraded both our business and home systems with new releases as they came out, and were always willing to pay the somewhat reasonable upgrade pricing. MS Office 2010 is a whole differant story, and simply out of reach for us. We can not aford the prices they are asking. Since we are running Office 2007 Small Business Addition, and need/want Publisher, and Business Contact Manager, we would not only have to pay full price for replacement (not upgrade) software, but would have to move up to the Professional version at $499, rather than the $279 we paid to upgrade last time around, or almost double the price. I do not know what we will do in the future. We are very concerned as to the direction the software industry is going. Very little value added, but at a very high price. Hopefully this time they have shot themselves in the foot.

When Office 2007 came out, I didn't go for the upgrade because I didn't think I'd like the drastically new "ribbons" interface. A few months ago, I bought a copy of Office 2010 Home and Student at Costco for cheap, and I was really, and pleasantly, surprised at how easy the ribbons interface turned out to be. I soon became completely converted to the new interface.

If you're already using any version before 2007 and find it adequate for your needs, there's still little reason to upgrade. Even more so for the 2007 version users. For me, the biggest improvement is Excel 2010, which, in its 64-bit version, supports billions of rows and hundreds of millions of column. This makes 64-bit Excel an extremely powerful number cruncher. In my quest to find a profitable stock trading system, I work with tons of tick data, and now I can ditch the expensive specialized software (which I have to pay for on a subscription basis) and use Excel instead. Excel also has all the functions I need for stock analysis, so it's perfect.

Of course, if all you need are Word, Excel and Powerpoint, the Home and Student edition costs just 100 bucks and lets you install on up to three (3) computers, which makes it a great deal. But if you need Access or Outlook, then a more expensive package is needed. If you do need the software, it's worth every penny, because you can be really productive, and you can probably use the software to make money, too, unlike, say, the $600 you spend on an iPhone or iPad which is just a toy (and apps cost you money faster than you realize).

I installed the professional version on my Toshiba laptop with an Intel i7 quad processor and 4GB of RAM. (I first uninstalled the 2007 trial version that had come with the laptop.) Installation went smoothly. The individual apps in the suite launch quickly, and I realy like the new Outlook (I was a big user of Outlook 2003). All my old Outlook files opened without any problem (as expected), and I think I'm now even more productive than before.

I'm in the middle of storing my tick data in Access and then reading them into Excel for number crunching. I'm not good at Access, so that'll keep me busy for a few weeks to come. Like I said, I'm excited at the prospect of finding a profitable trading system via Excel; at least, I'm now able to save hundreds of dollars each year, and be able to use a tool that's faster and easier to maintain than before.

Again, if you only need Word, Excel and Powerpoint (and OneNote), go with the Home and Student edition. You can even buy individual apps separately. Brick-and-mortar stores often have sales, like Best Buy, Office Depot and even Costco (with instant rebates).

First here's a little bit of info on me to put this review in context. I have used Office 2000 since 2000 & I'm happy with it. I could only find 1 significant reason for "upgrading": security. MS has stopped issuing patches for Office 2k, & there continue to be new security holes.

I use Excel on a daily basis, & occasionally use Word (mostly for formatting & sorting), Publisher (mostly for business cards) & Front Page (discontinued; my website was originally created with it many years ago). I do not use Outlook at all (Dates back to the days when Outlook was nothing but a virus trap, I ASSUME MS has solved that, but I honestly don't know), & also have never had the need to use Power Point or Access, though I understand their usefulness. For me, One Note appears to have some use for it's custom screen cap ability, but all that buys me is 1 less step, as I normally edit screen caps in a photo editor. Speaking of which, there is also a photo editor in 2010 (there also was a photo program in 2k that I rarely use). Haven't spent much time with it yet. I use freeware Irfan + a couple freeware optimizers for 99% of my photo needs.

I am running XP SP3.

First I'll list the very few positives I've encountered: It installs much faster then Office 2k. I was able to install to a new folder & also keep Office 2K (though that caused at least 2 problems which I'll get into later). Excel has fixed my biggest complaint with 2k: You can now copy search results without closing down the search window. I also just discovered that Word 2010 can save docs as a .pdf with about an 80% file size reduction & perfect formatting. While I'm sure some people find many of the new whistles & bells useful, that's about it for me.

Now for the many negatives:

First this is the most important. I use Excel for my business records. After "upgrading" from Office 2k to Office 2010, 2010 trashed a vitally important spreadsheet that I spent several hours figuring out how to restore. The date still displayed correctly in the formula bar, but not in the cell. I tried all the formatting options (including the suggested =DateValue function process) with no success. Here's an example:

4/29/10 appears as 40297. 5/4/10 appears as 40302. Etc.

Reopening with Excel 2k did NOT solve the problem. The problem (including any
new entries) is now identical in both versions of Excel. Files that have not been saved with 2010 do not have this problem. I tried numerous reformatting options to no avail. I was not able to Google a solution.

I finally figured out a solution. I have no idea why this worked, but it did.

1. Create a new book.

2. Pre-format the date columns.

3. Cut & paste 1 entire column at a time

Problem solved. It will save including the new formatting as office 2010 .xlsx or as Office 2k .xls.

Moral of the story: do NOT convert any Excel 2k spread sheet with dates to the new xlxs format, especially without backing up first!

Other issues: Office 2k opened instantly on every machine I've ever used it with. This beast takes 10-20 seconds to open Word or Excel on a Quad Core. Additionally, there is at least 1 major issue with having 2k & 2010 on 1 machine: Word reinstalls itself anytime I go back & forth from 1 version to the other. This happens with both versions. Also, Word 2010 can't open documents directly from an email (at least on my machine). It says it can't find the file.

Now we'll briefly talk about the ribbon. I was warned about this before I installed 2010, so at least I was prepared. I have found 2 partial solutions:

1. There is a somewhat hidden feature called "Quick Access Toolbar". This seems to be the best solution. The way it works is you add the functions you use most often, & then hide the ribbon other then the tabs.

2. There is a freeware program called "Ubit Menu" that is so essential it should ship as part of the program. What it does is adds an extra tab to the ribbon called "Menu" that gives you the Office 2003 pre ribbon menu as an option. Even that is way too cluttered for my liking, but it's a huge improvement from the ribbon. One also has the option to delete ribbon tabs after installing ubit, but so far I'm keeping all in the hope that someday I'll get used to them & maybe even find something helpful. My understanding is that I'm not allowed to post links here, but you can Google "Ubit Menu". There is one problem if you choose to have 2 versions of Office as I did, Ubit also installs itself in Excel 2k, & on startup Excel complains about an unrecognizable format; the solution is simply hit cancel. This issue only impacts 2k, it does not impact Excel 2010.

To be perfectly clear, without these 2 solutions I would uninstall 2010. I just don't have time to mess with the ribbon when I'm trying to work.

With 2k, the main reason I would use Word as opposed to my email client or text based freeware program Edit Pad Lite is for it's alphabetical sorting capability. So far, I have not been able to find that feature in Word 2010 (sigh). And waiting for Word to reinstall itself everytime I open it is getting old really fast.

Regarding the whistles, bells & clutter: I'm sure some of it is useful. Even with 97 & 2k, I never learned half of what it could do; from classes I took in 1998 I learned that just learning one Office program THOROUGHLY can take a really long time. Someday I may buy an Office 2010 for dummies book.

To summarize: I think this product is a huge step backwards in usability from Office 2k & the ONLY reason to upgrade is because MS stopped issuing security patches for 2k to force unnecessary upgrades. I am likely going to use 2010 as default & for files sent to me by others for security, but will likely use 2000 for files I created that I know are clean. In addition to the nightmare with Excel (& there are still unsolved issues with that spreadsheet), I find the menus & toolbars horribly cluttered & while Office 2k starts instantly, this takes around 10 seconds to start.

Well I received this product last week and have been using for alittle bit and lets say um not really anything that says lets go out and spend a fortune for this upgrade. I have used office 97,03,07 and now 2110 and I really feel like it has lost its power that it had like in office 2003. Not that is a workhorse.
I am not going to go into alot of technical talk here since I am not a techie. Office 2007 and 2010 are very similar and other than the bar brought back there is not really much that has said it is an upgrade. I have always been a big fan of microsoft products in every since Vista came out I feel that Microsoft may be loosing headway and the latest Office 2010 Pro is no exception. I am not here to bash but money is hard to come by and I like to think that you will get a return on your investment and I just don't see it here.
Will I recommend going out and buying Office 2010? Only if you have too much money! I am really sorry Microsoft I hope they can get there act and pricing where they used to be.