Office 2010 coming soon!

Microsoft Office 2010 is coming out soon and people will be looking to upgrade but we want to pose the question – why?

The Microsoft Office productivity suite has dominated the workplace and become the defacto standard when it comes to making documents. Everyone has probably worked with Office at one point or another to some extent but how many have really “used” it, you know pushed it to its limits, made it do things that most don’t think are possible, things that really show the value out of your $600 purchase? From our experience, not many. For those of you who do – that’s great, because I can make Excel flex with some VBA myself but when it comes to getting stuff done I feel its enormously bloated.

Bloat means that it has a ton of stuff that is non-essential and a waste of time, space and mental processing. Wait, what? Mental processing? Yes when you are looking for that button to freeze the top row in your spread sheet and you have to wade through 3 “ribbon’s” worth of junk to find it. That’s Office wasting your brain power.

So what do we suggest?

For the VAST majority of people out there: Google Apps

From the Official Google Enterprise Blog:

By no means do we think that Google could possibly develop all the functionality that any employee might need, but at the same time, there’s real value in services that all connect to a common backbone for core systems like contacts, presence and user authentication. Businesses need specialized accounting tools, CRM systems, marketing automation capabilities, project management tools and much more. Through the Apps Marketplace and our developer tools, customers can integrate 3rd party cloud services with Google Apps and enhancements they develop themselves. The possibilities are limitless.

Google Apps doesn’t do it all, in fact it doesn’t want to do it all because most people only need to do certain things. But I’m always going on about how powerful Google Apps is right? That’s because it is.

Within this year Google has committed to bringing Blogger, Picasa, Reader and more to Google Apps. That means from within the same tool you’ll have access to all of your information, the ability to share seamlessly and tie in capabilities that other products just cant match. Google Marketplace allows you to bring in tools tailored to your specific needs for a workspace that is not bloated, but custom. (Ask us how we can help your business create a great workspace.)

The Short:

There will be people who NEED MS Office, for the rest of us its cheaper, faster, better and safer to use Google Apps Premier Edition for our daily productivity.

Ask us