The Next Generation of Microsoft Office
The next generation of Microsoft Office, Office 2010 will come out after Windows 7 is released; it will be an interesting release to watch for seeing the various free and Open Source office applications out there.
It seems Microsoft has come out with a free, ad-supported version of Office 2010. It will be dubbed Office 2010 Starter, and feature just two main applications… Word and Excel, in a feature limited version. The good news is there is no time limit, so unless you uninstall it you can be editing and creating basic Word documents in the Office 2007 style ribbon. What if you need more horsepower in your office apps?
You can always upgrade 2010 Starter to another edition of the Suite, and all you need to do is enter your software license and all of the Office features will be active.
Lets remember, Microsoft is currently testing their online office version to rival Google Docs, but unless you have an invite… good luck getting your hands wet here. It will be interesting to see how they will roll this out to the public, because if I didn’t have to install Word and Excel on my box, I would highly consider running it in a browser. Not a Microsoft fanboy or want a much cheaper alternative to Microsoft Office? Remember that you can always check out OpenOffice.org or Google Docs.