Office 2010, the latest version of Microsoft’s office productivity suite, will ship to business users on 12 May. The product tackles document sharing by using SharePoint 2010 to allow users to share Office documents. It also features Office Web Apps, which enables users to view and make light edits to Word and Excel documents through their browser. Microsoft Office 2010 also allows users to work offline through new software - SharePoint Workspace 2010. According to Microsoft, when users reconnect their laptop to the network, the changes they made while offline will be synchronised. Businesses and consumers who purchase and activate Office 2007 - or a new PC running Office 2007 - between 5 March 2010 and 30 September 2010 will be able to download Office 2010 at no additional cost. To qualify for the free upgrade, users also need a Windows Live ID and must claim it before 31 October 2010 by visiting Microsoft’s Technology Guarantee page.

Upgrade prices were mysteriously absent from Microsoft’s Office 2010 pricing information, which they revealed last week. Microsoft has said “we are not offering upgrade pricing for Office 2010. Based on partner and customer feedback we’ve made many changes to the Office 2010 line-up designed to simplify the product line-up and pricing in the retail space. Removing version upgrades was one of those decisions. This reduces the number of products that our retail partners need to manage and also reduces customer confusion about which version of Office they should purchase.” This seems like a straightforward answer: take the upgrade option away, and customers can only pick a full retail copy. Of course, this does mean customers have to pay more to upgrade to the new version of Office.