Office 2010 is a worthy upgrade of Microsoft office 2007 suite juggernaut, but for many users "worthy" doesn't mean "necessary." If you're a casual user or are on a tight budget, you can manage without this upgrade, but power users with cash to spend will find the upgrade worth the cost. What we hoped for but didn't get in this version of the suite: a thorough reworking of Word and Excel to make them modern and user-friendly in all their features, not just in some. That would make for must-have Office upgrade. Even without those improvements, however, and Office remains the best and most powerful application suite on the planet.
Microsoft's latest version of its wildly successful productivity suite is a potent combination of innovation and ease of use, but it still has a few too many annoying faults (albeit far fewer than any other large-scale application suite). Still, I have to report that in the weeks I've been using Office 2010 full-time, I've been taken aback by a few instances when Word and Outlook shut themselves down automatically, displayed an error message, and then restarted. I didn't lose any data, but it made me nervous. As with earlier versions of Office 2010 Standard, you may want to wait for the inevitable Service Pack before considering an upgrade.
What about Access 2010, the latest version of Microsoft's long-established database app? The big news is its enhanced powers to publish a database to the Web and the convenience provided by the new Backstage view. For details, see our forthcoming separate review by Samara Lynn. An early peek at her results shows that Access lags behind competitors Filemaker Pro and Quickbase in some respects, making it one of the few parts of the suite that doesn't lead its product category on the Windows platform.
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