Ad-supported free Office coming in June
It now appears Microsoft Office 2010 will be released in June next year. And among six editions of the package will be a basic version, which is free but comes with advertising.
As we noted a couple of weeks ago, the beta edition has been released for public testing, along with a mobile edition. The main changes are the extension of the ribbon interface to cover every component program, and greater interaction with social networking (including business-orientated services such as LinkedIn.)
Another change which has been noted is that Excel will be able to run in 64-bit mode, which should improve performance for those who use it for particularly intensive calculations.
Microsoft had already given a target of the release date as being the first half of next year. Neowin is reporting that’s been narrowed down to June, with a Mac edition later in the year.
According to that report, there will be six different editions of Office 2010: Starter, Home and Student, Home and Business, Standard, Professional and Professional Plus.
The difference appears to largely be which components are included, with Professional Plus including all Microsoft office-related applications except Visio and Project, which will only be sold as standalone products. While Home and Student remains the basic entry-level edition, Microsoft has added a free Starter edition. This will include limited functionality versions of Word and Excel and will include some form of advertising. It’ll be interesting to see whether these ads are contextual – that is, based on the content of the document being worked on.
Meanwhile Microsoft has now released a language pack update for the beta edition, meaning it can now be tested in Chinese, French, German, Japanese, Spanish and Russian. Language packs from previous editions of Office won’t be compatible with either the beta or finished edition of Office 2010.
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December 1st, 2009
Or you could just use Open Office.
December 1st, 2009
Hope it comes integrated with the VISIO 2007.
It will be fun to get both of them together.