Office 2010 Beta

[Williebee]

And now, for your amusement (and mine, ok, mostly mine) I shall celebrate the holidays by installing and test driving Office 2010 Beta.

First, download. 684 MEG???? pig.

You get a product key (MAK) that they want you to print off for input later. Kind of important to hold on to that. (I turned it into a pdf and stuck it on the desktop.)

Second, backup all Outlook address books, email and any other Office files I care about. This will take a bit.

I'll be back.

[DeleyanLee]

I downloaded it a month or so ago, but I refuse to use Outlook unless I'm required by the job to do it. No worries for me there.

All in all, I'm fairly happy with it, but I only really use Word and Excel.

[Williebee]

Worth pointing out that I'm sticking this on an MSI Windtop with an Atom Processor and a gig of Ram.

I've been looking at the green progress bar, fully filled in, for about 15 min. now. At a couple of points the desktop has refreshed, and at one point the progress bar backtracked a few bars and then climbed to complete again. It's working on it. But this isn't the fastest machine in the place...

2:52, initial install finished, and I get to reboot. yay

3:04 Restart completed, Started Office 2010 and got the "This one time upgrade may take a few minutes." message. That took... a few minutes.

It seems to run fine. It's a brighter, grayer Office.

I am wondering what happens to the Beta program with the xml court judgement hanging over MS's head.


I'll play with it a bit, and see how it does. I get to do this with all new OS's and software, trying to work ahead of software changes for the schools I support. So, more updates down the road.

DeleyanLee, anybody else working with it, any insights, comments, grumps... ?

[Clair Dickson]

Office2010 does not have the offending xml.

I haven't installed Office2010 yet... the lappy's been acting damn funny lately, so I was thinking of wiping it and doing a fresh install anyway.

The Ribbons are fully customizable, or so I've read. This will be the part that excites me most. I like 2007, but I also LOVES making custom toolbars with the commands I always use right there waiting for me.

Have fun!

[Matera the Mad]

OOOOOoooooo, I am going to yield to temptation! Yes! Yes! Yes!
:Jump: :banana: :Clap: :hooray:

ETA:
:rant: Stupid drucking #^%*&$^#%$*&$^ java download crap %&^$^$^ stalls, sits there and and farts. I ^%^$^&$ hate $*%^^$^ that won't let a person download something decently.

[Williebee]

What's scary? I understood that whole ETA.

[Matera the Mad]

PFTHBLPPTTT!

The w00tness of it is that Publisher now has a ribbon and the nifty magic spook toolbar. Jeez, I was missing that spook when I do the monthly newsletter. It saves a lot of mouse-movement On the bad side, the color scheme has gone superblah with shitforcontrast in the black theme. Dammit, I liked the black. It goes with my new computer and phone. Now I'm stuck with silver for menu readability. I wish they'd let it have the classic look.

[Jamesaritchie]

The 684 seemed very reasonable to me, considering this is MS Office Professional Plus, and has every program known to man attached, including OneNote.

It was a fifteen minute download for me, which was about right for anyting downloaded from the Microsoft website. They're a bit slower than most places I download from.

I installed on a computer that has only 256 RAM, which Microsoft says is the minimum. Install took less than half an hour, but I didn't install Access, Excel, or OneNote.

I primarily use Word and Outlook as business tools. Wouldn't be caught dead without either one. Both have been working perfectly, and pretty darned fast, considering the computer I installed them on. Faster than Ms Office 2003 Professional on the same computer.

I've been using it for a month or so, and so far, I love it. Everything about it. No doubt that 2010 will be on all our computers as soon as it's available.

[Gary]

I installed it a couple of weeks ago, and I love it...so far.

[Matera the Mad]

I've been sending them smilies and a frownie or two. :)

[Williebee]

I installed the whole thing. (I can't believe I ate the...)

There's some stuff to like here. I like the screen capture tool in Word. Easy to use, and effective.

I like the customizing options. The default color scheme IS washed out and boring, but it's easy enough to change it, even go back to the 2K7 look.

On the downside, the Beta didn't uninstall worth a crap. I wound up having to do it manually, including some regedit work. And yet, when I reinstalled, it ran better than it did first go around.

I'm writing with it for a bit. Also doing some presentation work first part of next month.

[Darzian]

I downloaded it a month or so ago, but I refuse to use Outlook unless I'm required by the job to do it. No worries for me there.

All in all, I'm fairly happy with it, but I only really use Word and Excel.

Same with me.

[Matera the Mad]

I use Word to make simple things to print, and for word/page counts. Publisher for newsletters and other picky-layout stuff. PowerPoint for -- what it's good for. Access...I've played with some. Nobody else wants to play with me :( Excel is handy for lots of things. I don't touch Outlook with a ten-foot pole, normally, but I know how it works in case I have to explain something *shudder*. I like all the new feetch so far, except the oxiness of the oversize print dialog. Bloddy mammoth if you're a visualy impaired user with Windows fonts upsized. I don't know how it is in unreadable default mode. I b1tched about it :D

[maestrowork]

MS Office is such a hog... and for writers, it's an overkill. I dropped it two years ago and now I'm using iWork 100%. Very happy with it.

[Jamesaritchie]

Office is not overkill for some writers. Certainly not for me. As for Outlook, it's the tool your agent and editor will probably be using, and it's the only tool I know that allows fully formatted e-mails, something that's getting more and more important.

There is no handier tool for a writer than Outllook, and no better tool for business.

[maestrowork]

How much of the feature set in Word do you use, James? I doubt you use 10%, if that. I bet I can do with Pages everything you do with Word.

And Outlook is far from being standard, plus fully formatted emails are not universal. Most people, agents and publishers included, prefer plain text email anyway. I've been an IT professional for over 20 years, and I hardly see fully formatted email from anyone (other than colleagues to use the same systems).

There is no reason to install a 685MB monster just to write.

[Williebee]

There is no reason to install a 685MB monster just to write.

This way lies truth.

[Chris P]

MS Office is such a hog... and for writers, it's an overkill. I dropped it two years ago and now I'm using iWork 100%. Very happy with it.

I'm doing my WIP in Open Office just to see how I like it. There are some annoying things about it (I can't find a curly single quote and it is very lean on special characters) and I suspect I'm going to have to paste it into Word to correct what OO can't do.

For my editing/proofreading job, MS Office is great and I don't use OO unless I have to.

[equity space]

No thanks on anything "beta." Beta translates to Guinea Pig.