Office 2010: At last, the suite that users built

Get the Beta testing of Office 2010 at the link below.

Microsoft Office has every feature you could ever want and then some. They say the average user only needs about 10 percent of what Office has to offer -- and they've been saying it since at least Office 97. So how can Microsoft improve on a product that many customers considered feature-complete long ago?

The answer is by fine-tuning its user experience. Office 2010 entered public beta this week, and while it isn't as radical an overhaul as Office 2007 was, it builds on past offerings with yet another round of new features. This time, the focus is on collaboration, including improved SharePoint integration and Web-based document authoring.

Office 2010's face-lift
Naturally, improving the Office user experience meant changing its look and feel. Here is the familiar Excel UI as it exists in Office 2007:
Now let's look at the same application in the Office 2010 revamp:

Many of the changes are subtle. What's important to realize, however, is that none of the changes happened by chance or for change's own sake. When Microsoft reps briefed me on the Office 2010 beta release last month, they explained that every decision was informed by real-world usage data.

When customers install the Office 2010 beta, they are greeted by two new icons in the System Tray: a happy face and a sad face. These "Send a Smile" and "Send a Frown" buttons allow users to send immediate, detailed, written feedback to Microsoft, without leaving their Office application contexts. Feedback from the earlier Technical Preview round of testing is already reflected in the beta.

Microsoft learned long ago that you can't follow such feedback blindly, because it can be counterintuitive. For example, customers told Microsoft they love blue; it's predominantly their favorite color. That's why the Office 2007 UI defaulted to a blue color scheme.

**Office 2010 Beta Testing download link. You will be prompted to create an account for MSDN channel, its free by the way so just create and enjoy using the new Office 2010 Beta