Microsoft recently released Office 2010 Technical Preview on Microsoft Connect. I downloaded My copy right away. The 32bit version weighs around 530 MB.

M.S Office is the de-facto standard when it comes to Office Productivity suits out there. OpenOffice.org does provides a good competition but Microsoft just one upped them again with the new UI in Office 2010. Working in Office 2007 & 2010 is so easy now, that OpenOffice looks like an arcane antique compared to it.

The Technical Preview contains most of the application usually available in regular Office suits but I only installed Excel, Word & Powerpoint as these are the only application I use in M.S. Office anyway. Neowin has already done a good review of Office 2010 technical preview so I won’t go into many of the details as those are something people will be able to read on various websites anyway.

So, why another version of Office? Wasn’t Office 2007 good enough? How much can Microsoft enhance an already mature product like Office which hardly has any features lacking that I can think of so why another Office? The answer is simple, The new Office Web & a user experience catered to Windows 7.

Since the day I used Office 2007, its hard for me to work on Office 2003 or OpenOffice. I just can’t keep searching for options under all those menus. Microsoft Office already has so many features, just that these features were not visible to most people due to which they though M.S office is boring. The ribbon UI did a good thing that it now shows all the things that you will need right in front of your eyes. It made working on Office even more easier, something even Apple iWork & OpenOffice are not able to provide yet. Apple iWork is still good as it is only available to those using a Mac.

I downloaded some DOC files available in Connect, reading a document is so much better in Word now, which is something I miss in other Office Suites. You can minimize the ribbon at will. But the best feature that I like is the security feature which were already three in old version of office, just that now they are in your face due to the new Back Stage feature of Office 2010 which makes everything much clear. You can set permission etc to Office documents like who can edit it, or even if editing is allowed. The color scheme used in Office 2010 is also more soothing to the eyes.

Whether Microsoft admits it or not, but for a casual user, office person etc the changes are mostly in the UI & ease of use only. Office Web is good but since I haven’t used it much right now, I won’t comment on it. However, Office 2010 provides native integration with Office Live. It even supports saving in PDF format without any 3rd party plugin. It would be better if Microsoft provides native access to Live Mesh so that we can share documents directly on the cloud & share with whoever we want.

Since my work in SlideShare includes creating occasional slides & presentation, Powerpoint 2007 is a necessity while Office 2010 just makes my work better & simpler. Finding things, creating styles, arrows… links etc is quite easy.

Now the million dollar question, should you switch to Office 2010? The following scenario come to my mind….

1) You are an Individual Student who occasionally needs to edit a Presentation or Document. You don’t have any Office suite installed & don’t want to go for pirated software. Since you needs are occassional only even I don’t recommend paying $150 for Office Student & teacher edition as there is no point paying so much money for something you only use once in a while. You best bet is to use OpenOffice or similar office suite from other vendors.

2) You are a student & can Pirate Office 2010, well… then I can’t do much to stop you from using it.

3) You are a business using Office 2003, just upgrade. Office 2010 will bring huge time saving to your enterprise

4) You are a business using office 2007, stick to what you got. The feature set isn’t much different from Office 2007 so better stick to that only.

5) You are a business buying Office suite for the first time. If it is only basic work, where individuals work on Excel Sheets on there workstation then stick to OpenOffice, if you require collaboration then buy Office 2010. It collaborative feature & intigration with SharePoint Server is unmatched by all rivals.

Other then the UI refinement, there isn’t much that I will be missing in Office 2010 over Office 2007 myself.