Yingna

Microsoft Office 2010 Beta

Today, I decided to “upgrade” to Microsoft Office 2010 beta. I have never tried out Microsoft beta software before, mainly because they always write on their website, “Please use this on a secondary computer.” I don’t have a secondary computer to test out software on; I don’t have the time to use another computer just to play around with the programs. But I thought that if Microsoft was putting something out in public beta, the software has to be pretty much completed already. So I uninstalled my Office 2007 package and installed 2010 beta.

I have a Chinese essay due tomorrow, so after I installed the new package, I decided to give it a whirl with an actual task. The loading screen of the beta looked pretty neat; it looks sort of like when the Adobe programs load and displays the amount of program loaded. However, when the program actually opened up, the interface definitely did not look as nice. I think the interface no doubt would be beautified before the actual release, but the boring gray or gray tones of the entire program sort of made writing my essay kind of gloomy. Staring at the gray screen actually made me kind of unhappy. I know–weird.

The program also decided to get rid of the microsoft office button on the top left that when clicked would reveal the open/save/print options. I actually grew to like that button but apparently the majority of users did not. In the new version, this button is replaced with a more traditional “File” option in the ribbon navigation bar that leads to another entirely different page with information about the file and other options. I dislike this function because it takes away all the screen from the actual file.

But the major problems I have found already with the program is that the CTRL+Z option does not work and there are problems with saving. When I tried to save my essay first in a .doc file, it cut out half of my essay. I would not even have noticed if it was not for the fact that when I emailed the essay, I realized that when I opened it with Google Docs that half my essay was gone. Thus, I had to go back to the file (thank goodness I had not closed the Window), save it in .docx, and then save it in .doc.

I hope there are updates soon to fix these problems and in the coming weeks that the interface updates would come. But overall, I am excited to be testing a beta product.