Review: Microsoft Word 2010

By Gadjo Cardenas Sevilla

The recently released Microsoft Office 2010 suite is not only the latest version of Microsoft’s hugely successful integrated software suite, it is also the first version to come out after Windows 7, which sold a staggering 175 million licenses to date. MS Office 2010 also with a host of cloud solutions as well as overall refinements. We focused on one of the most used applications of this suite, Microsoft Word 2010.

 

Codenamed Office 14 (yes, it’s definitely been around, although to be accurate, Office 2010 is the 13^threvision), MS Office 2010 may look very visually similar to Office 2007 but it has  been improved in a number of areas, thanks mostly to Microsoft’s consideration of their users whose feedback played a large part in determining the feature-set and improvements.

This is specially true for MS Word, which looks very much like its predecessor even if it performs a lot faster and is snappier and more intuitive all around.

 

Microsoft went through some major rethinking and built the office suite around the way people use the application and for this they needed to collaborate with their customers.

9 million people participated in the testing process and Microsoft collected 2 million comments from beta testers. An additional 600 people participated in Microsoft’s Virtual Research Lab, where engineers monitored how people were using new features. Word now integrates some neat touches like a screenshot button right in the document. 

A number of in-application image formatting and editing tweaks have also made it to this release's feature set. You now have more control of art and images when creating such documents as newsletters and even simple websites and brochures. 

Art effects in Word Art approach the realm of Photoshop light and make it possible to bevel, emboss, outline and add shadow effects to words and letters. You can also fool around with images and remove the background of photos completely or replace them with a more suitable colour.

Features of Office 2010 include:

• §  Ribbon interface and Backstage View across all applications
• §  Background Removal Tool
• §  Letter Styling
• §  New SmartArt templates
• §  New text and image editing effects
• §  Screen Capturing and Clipping tools
• §  Live collaboration functions
• §  Jumplists in Windows 7
• §  New animations in Powerpoint 2010

Another new feature in Microsoft Office 2010 is the Social Connector. This allows users to write emails while keeping track of their family, friends, and colleagues by viewing status updates and past communication history with the individual. When users view their emails a name, picture, and title is available for the person they are contacting. Upcoming appointments can also be viewed with this new feature and users can request friends. 

 Our impressions

We installed our Office 2010 on a modest Lenovo Thinkpad X100e, which runs on an AMD Athlon 1.6GHz single-core processor with Windows 7 Home premium and 2GB of RAM. Despite this system’s relatively low-end specs we found that Office 2010’s applications were snappier, more intuitive and offered a number of new or previously hidden (or undiscovered) features.

We spent of our time with Word 2010 since it has long been our bread-and-butter word processor of choice. While we admit to being partial to Office on the Mac, we are also big fans of Office 2003 for its straightforward and no-nonsense approach.

As for Office 2010,  well we like this version far better than Office 2007’s.  We’ve grown accustomed to the ribbon interface which has all the buttons and menu items and realize that not has it become more intuitive but seems better organized.

We’re big fans of the Toolbox which floats and offers text and document formatting options and while this isn’t present all the time like in previous versions, all you need to do is right click  your mouse to invoke the familiar toolbox and all the necessary controls area right there.

There's also the option of using Microsoft Office Live to create, edit and save documents Save & Close on to Microsoft's servers. This allow unrivalled access, collaboration and a seamless Office experience regardless of where you are provided you have a Live account.  We tested the Word version of Live and really couldn't tell we were using a cloud version of the application. It was surprisingly fast and offered nearly all the most important features you would need. Looks like Google Docs now has some serious competition from the company that built a business around office applications.

All in all there is a lot to be excited about with Office 2010 and Word 2010. Unlike incremental updates in the past that rehashed the look and feel, this version is more customer centric and designed around the way we like to work. Now that it is updated and running on Windows 7, the MS Office 2010 suite is certain to surprise old and new users alike.

Rating: 5 out of 5