Microsoft Office 2010 is now available

Microsoft Office 2010, Visio 2010 and Project 2010 software suites are now shipping.  Office 2010 is now available at retail stores across Canada, such as Future Shop, Best Buy, Staples; through online retailers, including Amazon.ca; and direct from Microsoft at Office.com/ca. We've been testing Office 2010 for the past week and have found it to have increased overall speed even on a lower spec netbook running Windows 7 home. Expect a full review in the coming weeks.

Office 2010 also see's Microsoft's cloud computing initiative with the debut of free online versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote, which work in popular web browsers (Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome, and Apple Safari). Office Starter 2010,  is a new variant that has replaced the low-end home productivity software, Microsoft Works. Office Starter 2010 will have a pared down feature set and will be ad-supported.

Microsoft's update to its mobile productivity suite, Office Mobile 2010, will also be released for Windows Phones running Windows Mobile 6.5 and Windows Phone 7. In Office 2010, every application features theRibbon, including OneNote, Publisher, InfoPath, SharePoint Workspace (previously known as Groove) and the new Office Web Apps.

"Working with major retail partners and PC makers, we've made dramatic changes in the way we deliver Office 2010 to give consumers more buying choice, making it easier than ever to unlock the power of Office on new and existing PCs," said Jason Brommet, Group Marketing Manager, Information Worker, Microsoft Canada.

"For the first time, people can purchase a Product Key Card at retail to activate Office 2010 preloaded on new PCs. For those who want to download Office 2010 direct from Office.com for an existing PC, the new Click-to-Run technology will have them up and running in a matter of minutes."

Office 2010 can also be purchased with the most popular desktops and laptops from leading PC makers including Acer Inc., Asus, Dell Inc., HP, Lenovo, Samsung and Sony Corp. In the next year, more than 100 million PCs will ship with Office 2010 preloaded, which can easily be activated with the purchase of any one of the three versions of Office 2010, including Office Home and Student 2010, Office Home and Business 2010, or Office Professional 2010.

"Today is an exciting day for Future Shop. We're all about offering cutting-edge technology to our customers, and the buzz around Office 2010 in our online forums and in our stores has been growing. We're excited to offer Office 2010 and help Canadians express their creativity and stay more productive and connected than ever," says Elliott Chun, Marketing and Communications Manager, Future Shop.

From a survey of Office 2010 beta users, Microsoft found 75 percent say they plan to buy Office 2010 within six months. The Office 2010 beta program had over nine million downloads, more than six times the size of the Office 2007 beta - indicating strong consumer interest in Office 2010.

Productivity solutions across the PC, phone and browser

Throughout its development cycle, customer feedback has been critical to the improvements found in Office 2010. Based on this valuable input, Microsoft has made considerable enhancements to help users do the following:

--Create great looking documents and presentations. Express creativity in PowerPoint 2010 presentations with new video and photo editing features. Add extensive text effects and table formatting options in Word 2010. Reveal important trends in data with Sparklines in Excel 2010. OneNote 2010 makes everything you need simple to find, organize and share.

--Connect and work together more simply. Advanced e-mail management and calendaring capabilities in Outlook 2010, and the new Outlook Social Connector help people stay productive and in touch with personal and business networks. Work with others more efficiently using new co-authoring in Word 2010, PowerPoint 2010 and OneNote 2010. Deliver presentations over the Web with new PowerPoint Broadcast Slideshow.

--Get things done from anywhere. With Office 2010 and the Office Web Apps - the online companions to Word, PowerPoint, Excel and OneNote, people have the freedom to view, edit, and share Office 2010 documents in the cloud with Windows Live SkyDrive. The Office Web Apps preserve the look and feel of Office documents, so valuable content and formatting are not compromised while moving between the PC, phone and browser.*

Office Mobile 2010 is also available from Windows® Phone Marketplace for all Windows Mobile 6.5 phones. People using Office Mobile 2010 can perform lightweight editing of Office documents and take notes on the go, or work on Office documents stored on their phone or attached to an e-mail.