Are You Ready for Microsoft Office 2010?

On May 12, 2010, Microsoft will make available the new Microsoft Office 2010 version. As always, there will be several different versions depending on the applications needed. The top version being Office Professional Plus 2010, which includes the basics (Excel, Word, PowerPoint, OneNote) and items such as:

• Outlook

• Access

• Microsoft Communicator

• Publisher

• SharePoint Workspace

• InfoPath

Of course there are several other varieties that have the basic items listed above as well as portions of what is available in the Professional Plus version. For those of us that have been beta testing this software for sometime, we have found that this version is not merely cosmetic.

One of the new tools is found in Outlook and called "Outlook Social Connector" this new feature will allow you to connect to your favorite social networking sites such as Face Book, LinkedIn, MySpace, and soon others that will allow you to remain in contact with your contacts as Outlook will post their messages.

PowerPoint now includes a new online broadcast feature thus allowing you to send an email containing a link to your presentation to anyone around the world. The web site link provided will allow your meeting members to view your PowerPoint presentation live.

Microsoft is also launching a new Office Web Apps via the Windows Live website, allowing people to use simplified versions of Word, PowerPoint, Excel, and OneNote free. How cool is this? You can play with the software and use what you need, test-drive the newer version.

Word will now feature a new image-editing suite to help you prepare your photos for your document. Just plug the picture into the Word doc and you can manipulate the photo inside your document.

You should be able to open Office 2010 documents with your previous versions to some extent. For example, Office 2003 should be able to open your Office 2007 and Office 2010 documents so long as you have installed the conversion utility.

The system requirements for running the new Office 2010 are as follows:

• Windows XP SP3, Windows Vista or Windows 7

• Processor: 500 MHz or higher

• Memory: 256MB or higher

• Hard Drive: 1.5 GB of installation space, and I would suggest 4 GB of free space after the installation.

Of course, these are the minimum system requirements and as we, all should know for optimal performance you will want a 2.8 GHz Processor or better, 2 Gigs of Ram, and a large hard drive.