Office 2010 attracts with multimedia tools
Microsoft package relies on simple sharing and communication
On Tuesday, Microsoft launched Office 2010 for private customers and small businesses. As with the Enterprise launch in May, Microsoft emphasized the value of the new web apps. "For Office 2010 customers, the web apps are an excellent way to share documents with friends and partners," said Microsoft Austria boss Petra Jenner.
Of course, the focus was also on functionalities that are particularly attractive for private users. Office 2010 is more multimedia than its predecessor. This is particularly evident in the fact that image and video processing within the Office suite has been significantly improved.
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Multimedia communication
Especially for home office users and SMEs, as well as for large companies, it is interesting that Outlook presents itself as a powerful communication center. "Telecommunication costs practically nothing these days," emphasizes Michael Bartz, head of the Information Worker division at Microsoft. The trend is therefore increasingly towards multimedia communication.
It is precisely in this area that Office 2010 wants to provide better support to users. For this reason, the image processing of the Office package has been significantly expanded. Photos can now be sharpened and softened with simple tools and without your own graphics software, brightness and contrast can be adjusted and various color and effect filters can be applied. There is also the option of cropping images, i.e. removing an unwanted background. Office 2010 offers a video editing function for PowerPoint to enable multimedia presentations to be enhanced.
Work anytime, anywhere
Microsoft is declaring war on the cumbersome sharing of documents by email with the help of Office Web Apps and Windows Live SkyDrive. Documents can be saved directly online from the desktop programs in order to then view them online with the web apps and to edit them at least in a rudimentary way. A small obstacle is initially that the web apps in this country are initially only available to Office 2010 customers. In the USA and some other countries, all users with a Windows Live account already have the option of opening files using web apps. This should also be made possible worldwide "in the next few weeks or months".
The web apps should of course also make life easier for users who currently have no access to their Office installation. The online versions can import files from all Office versions from Office 97 and save them in Open XML format, pressetext said when asked. Importing files in the ODF format used by OpenOffice is not possible with the web apps for the time being.
Microsoft Office 2010 is offered in three versions for private and SMEs. The cheapest version "Home and Student" includes Word, PowerPoint, Excel and OneNote. "Home and Business" also includes Outlook. The "Professional" version also comes with Publisher, Access and improved support. The prices range from 109 euros for an activation key for a pre-installed Home and Student to 699 euros for Office Professional 2010 as a package product.(ck)
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