Review by Narut Ujnat

I was given the opportunity to review Office Professional 2010. I am a fairly competent user of Microsoft Office products, having used previous versions including 2007, 2003 and 2000.nI will review this in terms of changes that I have become aware of, and the overall quality of the product.nWord 2010n1. Ease of Setup: Unlike the bad old days of putting programs on the hard drive, this program came on a single DVD disk. As I had a previous version of Word, I was asked if I wanted to upgrade the program - which I did. It took about 10 minutes for the process to be completed. Overall this was very fast.n2. Program: if you are used to Word 2003 or earlier, the user interface is quite different. More choices appear as tabs, rather than the older style. This certainly takes some getting used to as you will have to locate where a certain tool might be located.n3. Visual: I believe that the aesthetic is quite nice. The look overall of the program, once you become more familiar with the layout, is actually more simple and elegant. It does take some adjustment from previous versions like Word 2003, but I now find this version much easier to use. I also believe it is more intuitive for the user.nOther programs:nThe Office Professional Suite adds Excel, Outlook, Publisher, Access and Power Point in addition to Word.nFrom the visual standpoint, the same tab system that is used in Word is applied here to the other programs.nPower PointnPower Point is a powerful program that allows the user to put together nice slide show presentations. Here, PowerPoint 2010 adds the tabs across the screen. This is a huge improvement over the 2007 version as it seems that the many features of PowerPoint are more easily located. I very much appreciate that it is far easier to set up new slides in the presentation and locate all the different features that were previously more difficult to locate. This program is a huge improvement over previous versions and I think most users will be very happy with the new more intuitive approach.nExcelnAgain, this version is a significant improvement over previous versions of Excel, including the 2007 version. Instead of previous versions which made the user locate the pull down window which may have held the required options, Excel 2010 has tabs that only require the user to go to the logical place where the desired option would be located and do the required task.nI believe that this version of Excel is probably the easiest and most intuitive version I have ever used of this powerful program.nOutlooknAs above, I believe that this version of Outlook is far better and easier to deal with than previous versions I have used. Set-up is much easier with a far more guided experience than previous versions that seemed to depend on the user know certain bits of information. Here, the set-up program just asks for the desired e-mail address and password, and it seeks to set up the information itself. This is a little but appreciated update, because on my previous 2003 version, set-up was so frustrating that I had to try over multiple sessions.nOverall, I believe that this is a superior version of Outlook and I look forward to giving more updates as I go through more of this program.

Conclusions:nI believe that Office 2010 is a tremendous improvement over previous versions. If you are using Office 2003 or earlier, than I think this is a major improvement and a necessary purchase. If you have Office 2007, then I believe that this is not such a vast improvement that you must upgrade this version.

Overall, I was not initially impressed with the vast suite of programs. Yet, on more continuous use, I believe that Microsoft has vastly improved the Office canon. Believe me, at first you will curse and scream in agony over the choices that have been made. Where is my favorite tool or feature that was supposedly upgraded you will as over and over. You will certainly consider yourself to be stupid for making the purchase. But, if you stick with these programs, you will eventually use it and believe it makes a great deal of sense and begin to become proficient with the programs. In other words, there is a significant learning curve with these programs. If you understand this and give it time, I believe that you will, like me, learn to appreciate what has been put into the Office suite.