I have a fair amount of experience with it as I have used different versions of Office 2010 for over a year now. I like it. It [...]]]> Office 2010 is here. Large Microsoft customers can buy it now. Consumers or smaller businesses will be able to buy it June 15.

I have a fair amount of experience with it as I have used different versions of Office 2010 for over a year now. I like it. It is fast. It feels faster than previous Office versions.

The user interface (UI) is better than Office 2007. Office 2010 expands use of the Ribbon to all Office apps, including Outlook 2010. The Quick Access Toolbar is more usable and allows the power user to avoid the Ribbon for many activities. The Office Button, found in 2007, is gone, replaced by the File button, a much improved item, which takes you to the Backstage View.

So should you buy it? My answer is yes, maybe or no. The answer depends upon which Office applications you use, how you use them, how much you use them and your budget.

I recommend you upgrade if you are dependent on Outlook XP (2002), 2003 or 2007. By “dependent”, I mean you live in Outlook. If you are a casual user, primarily using it for email, there is little reason to upgrade.

Office 2010 has lots of new features—a built-in screen capture tool, found on the Insert tab in Word and PowerPoint: Protected Mode pumps up security on downloaded documents helping to protect you from malicious files: better auto saving of open documents; improved Save File dialogs; lots of new Smart Art templates—to name a few. Word, PowerPoint and OneNote 2010 have co-authoring, which allows for simultaneous editing of a document by multiple people or by one person on multiple computers.

Do you often share or collaborate on Word, PowerPoint or Excel documents? Then consider upgrading. I mentioned the new co-authoring features above. There are other sharing features. You can easily send a document, save it to the web, publish to a blog, or fax it without a fax machine. (You need an Internet fax service. Go to http://j.mp/dCkbf7 to find out more.) Office 2010 integrates seamlessly with Microsoft’s Windows Live web-based services.

Separately, Microsoft has created Office Web Apps. This is their response to Zoho Office and Google Docs. They are a work-in-progress. It is hard to assess their usefulness. They are limited function versions of Word, Excel and PowerPoint. It appears that there are four versions:

• Windows Live paired with SkyDrive
• Docs.com – Facebook affiliation
• SharePoint 2010 self-hosted
• SharePoint 2010 web-hosted

Microsoft Web Apps response times can be frustrating. Google Docs is faster. The interface is the Ribbon. The feature set is crippled so that you still need the desktop applications to access anything beyond rudimentary application features.

If you are buying a new Windows 7 computer get Office 2010. Windows 7 and Office 2010 work very well together. Go ahead and get Office 2010.

However, if you use Office applications infrequently, because you primarily use your computer for socializing and surfing the web, or you are a photographer and live in Photoshop rather than Office, or your current version is good enough, or you do not want to spend the money then do not upgrade. If you are a Mac user you have to wait for Office 2011 to get a refresh.

Microsoft almost never makes things simple. Most of you have four versions to choose from:

• Home and Student
• Home and Business
• Standard
• Professional

There are also Academic, Enterprise and Starter Editions. Wikipedia has a table showing the versions’ differences.

There are trial editions you can download and install to test it out. Be careful it you do this. Do NOT uninstall your existing version when installing the trial.