What Editions Will Office 2010 Be Offered In?
Overview
Office 2010 retains many of the same applications we’ve seen over the years with a few notable exceptions. OneNote is finally getting some love from Microsoft by being included in all editions of Office. I’m still not sure how useful OneNote would be to users without a tablet PC. Also, Microsoft Communicator gets rolled into the Professional Plus edition as a standard product. In this article, I’ll cover each of the following versions explaining the differences between them:
- Home and Business
- Home and Student
- Standard
- Professional
- Professional Plus
Home and Student
Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote
The Home and Student version is definitely aimed at the home and student markets. As mentioned above, OneNote is really useful if you end up taking a lot of notes – and really only practical when using a tablet PC. If you aren’t using a tablet, you might as well use Word. If you don’t need anything but the basics, this is the right product to buy.
Home and Business
Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote and Outlook
Home and Business adds in Microsoft’s popular mail client Outlook. This edition would be appropriate for most small to medium businesses or users who don’t need all the “fancy” applications such as Publisher and Access. This edition is similar to the Standard 2007 edition.
Standard
Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, Outlook and Publisher
The new “standard” edition includes the products included in the old Small Business 2007 edition with the exception of the Outlook Business Contact Manager. I’m not sure why this edition is called standard… How many people are going to use Publisher on a regular basis?
Professional
Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, Outlook, Publisher and Access
Professional edition takes what Standard Edition offers and adds in Microsoft Access. This edition is probably only useful to a few people within an organization. SharePoint administrators (use Access for bulk editing of documents) or Access developers would likely use this edition.
Professional Plus
Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, Outlook, Publisher, Access, Communicator, InfoPath and SharePoint Workspace
This is the “kitchen sink” edition of Office 2010 adding in Communicator, InfoPath and SharePoint Workspace.
I’m hoping Microsoft starts to think about how companies use Office. In our organization and many like ours, we have everyone running the basics – Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook. If we wanted to start using Microsoft’s Unified Communications products, we’d need to purchase Communicator separately. Also, if we wanted to start using InfoPath forms, again, we’d need to order InfoPath separately. Does everyone in a company need Publisher and Access? Maybe it’s for nostalgia, but I’d prefer Microsoft drop Publisher and Access from their list of “standard” office apps – like they’ve done with Visio – and offer the Professional edition with Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, Outlook, Communicator, InfoPath and SharePoint Workspace.
Pricing
Pricing for Office 2010 hasn’t been officially released as of yet. We can make the relatively safe assumption that 2010 prices will be similar to the 2007 counterparts. I’ll list the 2007 edition pricing next to the 2010 equivalent. Once pricing is released, I’ll update the article to reflect this.
Home and Student 2007 = Home and Student 2010- $150
Standard 2007 = Home and Business 2010 - $400 (2010 adds OneNote)
Small Business 2007 = Standard 2010 - $450 (2010 adds OneNote)
Professional 2007 = Professional 2010 - $500 (2010 adds OneNote)
Ultimate 2007 = Professional Plus 2010 - $680 (2010 adds OneNote and Communicator)
It’s nice that Microsoft dropped down to five core products (from 2007’s eight) – it’ll be interesting to see if 2010 can top 2007’s successful launch.
This post is part of the series: Microsoft Office 2010 - Products, Features and Editions
This series will take a look at the upcoming Microsoft Office 2010 suite of products, including the basics of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Access, Outlook and two of the upcoming server editions of Exchange and SharePoint. I’ll also discuss the new editions and the biggest features coming to Office.
