Microsoft Office 2010: Round-up of the reviews

In the battle for web dominance Microsoft has unleashed its latest weapon in the ongoing war with Google. The godfather of office software has launched its flagship offering Office 2010 and has thrown in the free online component Office Web Apps. The new offering is clearly a direct shot at the bow of Google Docs which has been encroaching on Microsoft’s core business with its free online tools. But Microsoft need not worry quite yet Google Docs currently only has a relatively small (4%) but growing share of the market. In direct contrast, Microsoft dominates the office software space, with a market share of more than 94%. The vast majority of sales are to businesses. With the release of Office 2010 has Microsoft done enough to fend off the competition, is their latest offering good enough to cement its share in the market space? Here we look at the reviews from the web and find out.

Computerworld.com: “I review plenty of software packages throughout the course of a year, and it’s rare that I come across one that I believe will truly make a difference in the way that I work or use my computer. This is one of those times.”

The Guardian: This version of Office is very much more focused on the world outside your PC. As well as the collaborative nature of the Web Apps, you’ll be able to keep on top of what your colleagues and contacts are up to, either via your company’s Sharepoint infrastructure or via the big social networks.

Techradar: There might not be any one feature that you’d buy Office 2010 for (although search in Outlook comes pretty close and collaborating in Word, Excel, PowerPoint and especially OneNote through SkyDrive is compelling), but put them all together and you get a hugely powerful suite of apps that’s still easy to work with.

PC Advisor: Microsoft Office 2010 is a significant upgrade from previous versions of the Microsoft productivity software suite. Cohesion and the ability to quickly and easily share information major selling points. Microsoft has given back control to the user and, combined with the massive functionality, the results are overall rather pleasing.

The Register: Although Office Web Apps are underpowered in their first release, if you put them alongside the SharePoint-2010-powered co-authoring and offline features in desktop Office 2010 then you get a strong collaboration platform. The Web Apps also give Microsoft some sort of solution for non-Microsoft mobile devices such as the Apple iPhone or Google Android.It is this that makes Office 2010 actually interesting, and it will justify an upgrade.