The SA launch of Microsoft Office 2010 took place yesterday, with Redmond looking set to take on Google Docs to try and gain dominance on the cloud collaboration front.
 
Office 2010 lines up the usual collection of office productivity software programs like Microsoft Word, -PowerPoint, -Excel and –Outlook, but will also take on other similar online productivity offerings, such as Google Docs with some new functionality. One of its new features is ‘co-authoring’, which is the ability for several people to work on the same document, either simultaneously or at different times, whether they are online or offline.
 
Another new development is Office 2010’s Web Apps that are web browser based versions of Word, PowerPoint, Excel and OneNote. These will be available to consumers for free via Windows Live and business users that are licensed for Microsoft Office 2010 will be able to run Office Web Apps on-premise via a server running SharePoint.
 
Other notable new feature includes a spreadsheet application Excel called Sparklines, which are tiny graphs that can fit into a single cell of a spreadsheet, the ability to edit video clips within PowerPoint, plus live web broadcasts of PowerPoint presentations.
 
“This version of Office allows people to work smarter and faster from virtually any location using any device. Given many people ‘live’ in their email these days, this is a critical factor, and Outlook 2010 takes this to the next level,” said Microsoft South Africa’s Albie Bester. “Web Apps allows people to open and work on Office documents from virtually anywhere, on any device with an Internet connection. They can also share documents with friends, family and co-workers anywhere.”
 
You can check out our review of Microsoft Office Professional 2010 Beta 2 Preview for more info on what you can expect from the new version of Office. Office 2010 will arrive in retail stores in July. Microsoft also launched Sharepoint 2010, Visio 2010 and Project 2010 along with Office 2010.