Microsoft Word 2013
The first thing I opened was Microsoft Word 2013. Everybody knows what Word is, and everybody uses this popular industry standard. In Word 2013, Microsoft hasn’t really changed the product much. It’s got a nice new welcome screen that presents you with templates to begin working with. Other than that, however, its the same piece of software it was in 2009 when Office 2010 was released. Here is a screenshot of the new welcome screen. Also, I’ve put the exact same content in Microsoft Office Word 2010 right next to Microsoft Office Word 2013 so you can see the similarities between the two.
As you can see, there are very few differences between the actual layout of the two versions. One notable improvement (the only thing I noticed that actually really affected the usability of Word is the way the cursor works. In Office 2010 I often noticed that the cursor would lag and jump slightly as it was moving across the page, no matter how good of a computer Word was running on. Microsoft addressed this bug in Office 2013, bringing a much smoother cursor not only to Word but also to PowerPoint, Excel, and all the other programs in the Office 2013 suite as well.
Microsoft PowerPoint 2013, Excel 2013, and Outlook 2013
It’s almost midnight here so I’m just going to throw the rest of my screenshots your way. I have no comments about these other programs, as I don’t think I use these enough to give me the qualification to judge the new version against the old. However, once again it looks like Microsoft changed nothing but the outlines of the interface.
Conclusion
While Microsoft Office 2013 will look much better when used with Windows 8, it isn’t a significant improvement and does not merit the cost of an upgrade from existing versions of Microsoft Office 2010.
In addition, Microsoft does not plan on supporting Windows XP or Vista. You will have to be running an up-to-date version of Windows 7 or Windows 8 to be able to use Office 15. Try Microsoft Office 2013 (Office 15) here. Discuss this review in our forums here.
What about the final score?
We’re going to do things a little different this time around. Since Office 2013 is currently pre-release software, and because of its similarities to Office 2010, Microsoft Office 2013 is not going to get a score.
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