What’s new in the “leaked” Office 2010 Technical Preview?

Officially the Technical Preview for Office 2010 will be released in July, but during the last few days a leak became available in the torrent sites like isohunt and mininova. Below are some screenshots of the new features that come in this new version.

The ribbon interface, like in Office 2007, is still there. Users that are used to the ribbon interface will find no dramatic changes with this 2010 version.

The new Office button located at the left side of the Home menu makes it easier for users to access common Office tasks like creating a new document, choosing a new document from templates, and so on.

The Office button allows users more than just saving and opening files. It lets settings of permissions easier too. The document properties is also viewable and editable so users can change the author, tags, categories, related documents and other metadata properties of a document.

I also noticed the Screenshot tool located under the Insert menu of the Ribbon interface. It automatically generates a screenshot of all actively running windows on your computer. Cool huh? For heavy screenshot users like me, I find this new feature very helpful.

There are more subtle yet useful improvements like the capability to save directly to PDF without having to install an external plug-in.

The picture tools are also enhanced – there are Photoshop-like effects that you can use to enhance pcitures pasted on any Office documents. The picture formatting capabilities are so cool that we will cover them more extensively on another post.

Another notable update is the capability to translate in other languages under the Review menu. Previously users will need to install a plug-in or some other third party tool to handle this. Now, language translation is incorporated by default.

I will keep you informed as soon as I saw some more new features of this released preview version of Office 2010. My initial impression is that there are indeed new improvements but will those improvements be enough for Office 2007 users to jump to the new version?

For Office 2003 and below users, this is definitely a needed upgrade but what about folks who just shelled out money for the Office 2007? I think they need to wait and see if the new version will warrant an upgrade purchase.

By the way, beware of “leaked” Windows 7 and Office 2010 versions in Torrent sites. This threat is real! There are lots of malware infected downloadable installers out there so make sure to NOT install them on your primary computer or a computer that contains your important documents and files.