Anyone can give Microsoft's Office 2010 productivity suite a spin, but not all the pieces are ready. Gregg Keizer outlines what to expect
In mid-November Microsoft launched the first public beta of Office 2010. As the last big testing milestone for the new suite, Microsoft was keen to get the beta into the hands of a very large group. "Tens of thousands tried the technical preview, but now we're talking about millions of people," says Takeshi Numoto, corporate vice-president for Office. >From the user's point of view, the best thing about Office 2010 beta is that it's available to use, free of charge, until 31 October 2010. And unlike with the Windows 7 beta, you don't need to rush to download the software immediately. You can do so any time you feel like it. In fact, we've made it even more convenient than that: you'll find an extended trial version on our cover DVD. For most people, however, a month would be plenty of time to establish whether the new office suite is worth having. Microsoft certainly hopes you like Office 2010: it had a tough enough time persuading consumers and small businesses of the need to switch from Office 2003 to Office 2007. The last version brought new file formats that didn't want to work natively with its predecessors, plus a revised menu structure that was intended to simplify things but wasn't universally welcomed. Will Office 2010 beta be enough to change your mind? Initial feedback on the public beta has been mixed. PCAdvisor.co.uk users reported that it installed faultlessly, but not all the expected features are available yet, and not everyone is ready to embrace that shiny yellow Ribbon interface. For an in-depth look at what it contains, how it performs, what you need to do to get hold of Office 2010 - or be rid of it - and the system resources it demands (this is Microsoft after all), read on. FAQs: All you need to try out the Office 2010 beta When can I download the beta? Immediately. Microsoft rolled out the beta at its Professional Developers Conference (PDC) in November. You can download it from tinyurl.com/yexjp89. If you don't want to hang around waiting for a hefty download to complete, there's a 60-day trial version on this month's cover DVD. Do I need 32bit or 64bit Windows? Office 2010 is the first Microsoft suite to be offered in both 32- and 64bit versions. Choose the version that fits your operating system. If you're not sure of this, click Start, Control Panel, System Maintenance, System and details about your PC will appear. We were unable to install Office 2010 beta on 64bit Windows XP, however. Is Microsoft limiting who can try it? There's no cap on the number of downloads for Office 2010 beta. And Microsoft has not, as yet, set a time limit. "I'm not sure whether we have a specific plan to shut off availability at some point," says Takeshi Numoto. The Microsoft vice-president adds that the company intends to make sure "millions and millions" of users are able to download and try the preview. What edition of Office is the beta? You can choose between Office Professional Plus 2010, the everything-and-the-kitchen-sink edition, or Student and Home. When Office 2010 launches commercially, Professional Plus will be available only to enterprises and volume licensees. Professional Plus includes Microsoft Word, Excel, Outlook, PowerPoint, OneNote, Access, Publisher, InfoPath, SharePoint Workspace and Communicator. Microsoft originally listed three different versions on the Office 2010 beta website: Professional Plus, Office Professional and Office Home and Business. The two retail versions have yet to be offered through the beta program, however. Numoto said Microsoft still plans to offer versions other than Professional, but wouldn't be drawn on timing. "We'll make additional offerings fairly shortly," was all he would reveal at launch time. Are there any problems with the beta? The day it launched there were a few issues, but since then availability of the code from the download site has been fine and it's been simple enough to get the product key. What do I need to install the beta? Microsoft has set the minimum requirements as a 500MHz or faster processor, 256MB of memory, 3GB of hard-disk space and Windows XP Service Pack 3 (SP3), Vista SP1, Server 2003, Server 2008 or Windows 7. "You don't need to replace hardware that's capable of running Office 2007," Microsoft says. The 32bit version is about 85MB; the 64bit version is 750MB. Do I need to activate Office? You'll need a product-activation key to use the software beyond the 30-day trial period. (It's not an issue if you get it from our DVD.) The product key you're assigned when you start the download will work only with the beta code. Print it out and store it safely. The product key can't be used to upgrade from the technical preview either; you'll need to uninstall that version and then install the public beta. Can I upgrade Office 2007 to the beta? Yes, but you may not want to. When you install Office 2010 beta, you can choose between Upgrade and Customize options. The former replaces your existing copy of Office with Office 2010. However, once the beta expires you'll have to reinstall the earlier edition using the installation CD. Choose the Customize option and install Office 2010 beta alongside your existing version so you can use both. You'll still need to reinstall one - and perhaps two - applications from your older edition once you stop using the Office 2010 beta, however. These include the Outlook email application and SharePoint Workspace, which can't co-exist with previous versions on your computer. Microsoft says you can't run two copies of Outlook on the same system. What's Click-to-Run? Click-to-Run is a technology that Microsoft debuted along with the technical preview as a way to optimise downloads. It 'streams' pieces of the Office 2010 beta as you begin the download, and should allow you to start using elements of the suite within minutes. While you get to work on the trial, the remainder of the code is downloaded in the background by Click-to-Run. But there's more to Click-to-Run than speeding up the process of starting to use Office 2010. The technology also runs the application in a virtualised environment, separating it from the rest of Windows. "Click-to-Run applications don't end up modifying any other software installed on the system," explains a Microsoft engineering team blog post. "With few exceptions, only user data actually passes through the virtual environment to the local system." Microsoft says it will also use the Click-to- Run technology to deliver free trials of Office 2010 when it ships next year. Which languages are supported? English, Chinese, French, German, Russian and Spanish so far. Japanese has also been promised by Microsoft. What support is available? You can browse the support material on office.com, or ask other beta testers for help in the user forums - or, of course, our own forums at pcadvisor.co.uk. When does the beta expire? Not until 31 October 2010, according to the end-user licensing agreement (Eula) that accompanies the product. But the full version of the software may launch earlier; undenied rumours surfaced at the start of December that it will launch in June. What about the online version? A limited version of Office Web Apps can also be downloaded. You can create but not properly share or do much editing with these apps so far. Word, Excel and PowerPoint are the only three apps currently available. "We should have a fully featured beta for consumers early next calendar year," says Numoto. "Until then, consumers will continue to get the technical preview of Web Apps." For more details, see the Microsoft SharePoint 2010 blog post at bit.ly/1fdHnL. Will Office be updated before launch? No. Microsoft says it will go straight from beta to 'release to manufacturing' (RTM) version. Can I easily get rid of the beta if I wish? Go to Control Panel, Add/Remove Programs in XP; Control Panel, Uninstall a Program in Vista; and Control Program, Programs, Programs and Features in Windows 7. Select Office 2010 and click Uninstall. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Copyright (c) PC Advisor 2010 #16 HELPROOM HASSLE-FREE PC Be more productive in Microsoft Outlook Limit new-mail notifications, edit subject lines and link up Outlook and Twitter with a free toolbar. Rick Broida shows you how Microsoft Outlook has had its fair share of criticism for its annoying habits. Thousands of Outlook users have been lobbying Microsoft for improvements in the next version Message alert alarm Turning off Outlook's mail notifications is a must if you want to get things done. By default, Outlook alerts you to the arrival of every email message that enters your inbox. It's a great idea in theory, but the end result is very much like a colleague popping his head into your office every five minutes to ask a question. It's not good for productivity. Disabling new-message alerts is both liberating and easier than you might think. Choose Tools, Options, click Email Options and select Advanced E-Mail Options. In the resulting window, disable the following options: 'Play a sound'; 'Briefly change the mouse cursor'; 'Show an envelope icon in the notification area'; and 'Display a New Mail Desktop Alert'. Click ok. Outlook will continue to receive new messages at scheduled intervals, but it will do so without interrupting you. In other words, you can now review your inbox on your schedule, rather than Outlook's. Edit subject lines A common email annoyance is a subject line that no longer matches the content of the message. Suppose you and your colleagues started off emailing each other about a company event. Somewhere along the way, the conversation shifts to sales forecasts, at which point a colleague pastes in some new figures. Now it's a message you want to keep for future reference, but you'll probably never remember that this valuable information is embedded in a conflab about the office team-building day. Fortunately, Outlook has a hidden feature that lets you edit an email's subject line. Open the email in a new window; this trick can't be done in the preview pane. Click anywhere in the subject line, then edit it as you see fit. Press Enter and accept whatever warning Outlook gives you. You can now file the email with a more appropriate (and informative) subject line. Tweet from Outlook If you use Outlook to manage your contacts, calendar, email and the like, why not use it for your Twitter activity too? TwInbox ( bit.ly/8szSGm) is a free plug-in that adds a Twitter toolbar to Outlook. Once installed, TwInbox places a new folder in your inbox. It can also make individual folders for each sender, which you might find helpful from an organisational standpoint - unless you follow lots of people. Supply your Twitter username and password, and the plug-in will fetch all the tweets from your account and let you read them just as you read email. With a click of the toolbar you can send out an update, send a direct message, reply to a message or retweet something. TwInbox automatically shortens any long web addresses using TinyURL.com. The toolbar also shows you a preview of new tweets as they arrive, which saves you having to switch over to the tweets folder every time you want to check for updates. In short, TwInbox is a terrific little utility, and it's a must-have tool for any Twitterloving Outlook user. We wish it could handle more than one Twitter account, but we can't argue with the price: TwInbox is free. To unsubscribe send a message to accessindia-requ...@accessindia.org.in with the subject unsubscribe. To change your subscription to digest mode or make any other changes, please visit the list home page at http://accessindia.org.in/mailman/listinfo/accessindia_accessindia.org.in
