Is Office 2010 Worth Buying?

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I had the opportunity to try out Microsoft Office 2010 Home & Student Edition recently. This is a $149.99 version of the software. The Professional Edition is $499.99.

What’s the difference between the $150 and the $500 version?

With Home and Student you get:

Word
Excel
PowerPoint
OneNote

With Professional you get:

Word
Excel
PowerPoint
Outlook
OneNote
Access
Publisher

If you’re wondering if there’s an intermediary version that has everything in Home & Student and Outlook, yes there is. It’s called "Office Home and Business 2010". The price is $279.99 from Microsoft – and it is cheaper than buying Home & Student and then Outlook afterward.

Chances are however you’re only interested in Word, Excel and PowerPoint, so Home & Student Edition is good enough for most people – myself included.

The nice part about MS Office 2010 is that if you want to try before you buy, you can download the trial edition. This is a fully functional and "uncrippled" Office 2010. The trial period lasts for 60 days, so if you want to try it out, head on over to www.office.com and get your trial copy.

Will Office 2010 work in XP?

Amazingly, yes.

The system requirements for Office 2010 are easily met as long as you have Service Pack 3 installed in your XP.

Other buying options

I want to mention these before continuing with my overview of MS Office 2010.

The absolute best deal on MS Office 2010 Home & Student is a 3-pack license for $119. This gives you 3 licenses you can install on 3 separate computers.

The Home & Business Edition I mentioned above can be had for $214 instead of $279.

The Professional Edition can be had for $408 – almost $100 less than if buying from Microsoft directly.

Outlook 2010 standalone is as low as $119. If you combine the 3-pack with the single license of Outlook, the final price is $238.

I will say up front that if you don’t need Outlook, don’t bother with it and go for the plain Home & Student Edition.

My overview of Office 2010

Speed

Something I immediately noticed after installing Office 2010 is that it is significantly faster than the previous version once updated completely. What I mean by "completely" is that after install the suite will contact Microsoft servers and update anything it needs to. This does cause stutters and pauses while it’s doing it, but once all finished up, any program in the suite is rocket-fast compared to the last Office version. 2010 runs circles around the 2007 edition, no question.

Getting used to the ribbon

I’d be lying if I said there wasn’t a learning curve to this. The ribbon interface is something totally new in 2010 and scares some people. If you feel scared by it – that’s completely understandable because it does change how things work in the suite.

I can say with confidence that the ribbon is better. A lot of thought went into it, it is easier to find stuff and get things done in a faster and more efficient way. As I’ve mentioned several times in other articles, the biggest advantage is that you can use the Quick Access bar (at top) to assign any function as a quick shortcut icon. Find the function, right-click, "Add to Quick Access", done. Very nice, very efficient, and saves a ton of time compared to hunting around for common things you do in Word, Excel or PowerPoint.

How long does it take to get used to the ribbon? If you use Office with any sort of regularity, about a week. Maybe less. It depends how often you use the software.

Is it still a beast?

Office has always been very large and as such has a tendency to slow Windows down because of its bigness. 2010 however is the first Office I’ve seen since 2000 that doesn’t slow down Windows to a crawl. In fact it runs quite smoothly.

An important note I must mention is that I ran Office 2010 in Windows 7, meaning I don’t know how it will operate in the XP operating system, however I assume it runs fine as this is a big deal not only to Microsoft but also to the customers (you) who use the software.

It is safe to say however that Office 2010 will most likely be the last version that will work in the XP operating system.

As to the question of whether Office is still a beast, yes it is. It’s a very complicated set of programs, but the nice part is that they no longer feel as big as they are.

Do you need Office 2010?

This is The Big Question that’s the most important to answer, and it’s best answered by answering other pertinent questions.

Do you use Office 2010 at work?

If the answer is yes, and you routinely edit documents from home to office and vice versa, then yes, you should buy a copy.

Is your current version of Office running too slow?

If the version of Office you have now runs too slow for your liking even though you’ve upgraded your PC significantly, then yes you should buy 2010.

What do I mean by a significant upgrade?

Office 2010 runs very fast on a 2-core CPU with 2GB RAM. If you are above that spec and the Office you have is still slow, the 2010 Edition will speed things up in Office significantly.

Do you have an Office version below 2003?

Office 2003, released in 2003 (obviously) will remain current for a few more years to come. If however you’re running a version prior to that, such as Office XP or Office 2000, it may be a good idea to upgrade to Office 2010.

How do you know if upgrading would be a good idea?

If you routinely have edit documents from work at home, you will inevitably run into Word compatibility problems with any version of Office prior to 2003 if you haven’t already.

Do you post documents and/or spreadsheets online?

Web-based document editors (Google Docs, Office Live, etc.) "like" documents created by 2003 or above much more compared to prior Office versions. If there are instances where you need to trade documents with friends/co-workers/colleagues via services like Google Docs or Office Live, the bare minimum requirement for proper compatibility is 2003.

Do you need better OpenDocument support?

Office 2007 was the first version to have document support for open source suites like OpenOffice.org, but support was very poor and formatting was all screwed up when you tried to open up an ODF inside Word.

Office 2010 on the other hand has very good OpenDocument support. If you receive documents routinely that were created in OpenOffice but prefer to use Microsoft Office to edit and send back in the same format, you need 2010.

If every answer to the questions above was "No"…

…then you don’t need Office 2010 and it would not be worth the buy.

Not sure whether you need it or not?

Remember, the trial version is 60 days, meaning you’d have two whole months to try Office 2010 for free and decide whether it’s for you or not.