Doctor Dos says....Office 2010: Is it really worth upgrading?

MICROSOFT launched its latest offering - Office 2010 – in a blaze of publicity earlier this summer but what impact has it had on SMEs? And if you are considering an upgrade, is it really worth it?

Office 2010 is basically available in two different formats: a retail version and a volume-licensing version.

Small businesses, with 10 PCs or less, are advised to go for the retail format. Larger businesses, with multiple PCs, need to go down the volume-licensing route.

On the retail side, there are two main packages that are recommended for business use: Office Home and Business 2010, and Office Professional 2010.

Office Home and Business (RRP £239.99) includes Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook and OneNote.

Office Professional (RRP £429.99) includes all of the above, plus Publisher and Access.

The other main difference is you get 90 days of technical support with Office Home and Business, compared to a full year with Office Professional.

The volume-licensing format also has two different packages for business users: Office Professional Plus 2010, and Office Standard 2010.

Professional Plus has all of the applications in Office Professional, plus the added benefit of InfoPath, SharePoint and Workspace Communicator.

Office Standard is a more basic package, which includes Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, OneNote, and Publisher.

So what version should you be going for? Well, that basically depends on your business needs.

If you’re a small business (with 10 PCs or less) and need Access to create your own databases, then you’d go for Office Professional, rather than Office Home and Business.

However, if you have no need for Access, then the more basic package would probably be more than adequate – and also cheaper.
Microsoft claim there’s more than a hundred different features on Office 2010, compared to Office 2007, but most of those are subtle changes to the interface.

Perhaps the biggest change is to Outlook, which now lets you track emails in one continuous conversation.

They’ve also made it easier to drop film clips into Power Point.

If you are currently running with Office 2003 then it’s probably worth considering an upgrade to 2010.

But if you’ve already got Office 2007, are you really gaining a lot by upgrading?

In my opinion, probably not.

* MCD Computers Services offers a free, independent assessment of your IT needs. We even exclude ourselves from being your IT provider for six months, which guarantees you get the best possible impartial advice.

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