Most of us spend more time each day with Microsoft Office than we do with our significant others. Given that, it's no surprise that an upgrade of our favorite productivity suite gets a lot of scrutiny as we ponder the decision; do I upgrade or let this version go by?

I admit it; I'm a techno-nut so I always upgrade everything. I just want to have the latest whatzit even though that might mean I get to collect a lot of arrows, as pioneers often do. But that's me. And (rationalization alert) it's also part of my job; to check out new tech in order to advise clients regarding the in and outs of the product in question. That's a great rationalization. I'll keep using it.

And so we come to the latest Office incarnation; Office 2010. Is this upgrade a must-have? Early impressions lead me to say ... probably not. Unlike the previous jump from Office 2003 to '07, this newest version of Office is more of an evolutionary change from it's predecessor. Office 2007 presented a pretty substantial mental hurdle for most us. First, the user interface changed substantially. A change for the better, I might add, as more consistency was introduced between the various Office suite members. It just took some getting used to.

Probably the most non-trivial change from '03 to '07 was the introduction of and standardization on the XML-based file format ... the added "X" after all the file types in document names (.docx, .xlsx, etc.). To share a file with a previous version colleague an Office 2007 user had to explicitly save it in the "old" format, or change their preferences to revert to the previous file format as their default. Of course, most of us didn't do that, leading to all sorts of document sharing issues as users of previous Office versions couldn't read the new fangled files put out by Office 2007. Of course there was the MS Office Compatibility Pack download that enabled pre-2007 Office versions to read the new XML file format, but were issues there as well.

Bottom line? Most of us moved to Office 2007 as quickly as possible, enduring the learning curve of the new interface, if for no other reason than to avoid the hassles encountered with sharing files with our non-2007 brethren.

So, what about Office 2010? Is this one a must-have upgrade? Sure, if you're an upgradeaholic like me. For the rest of the world? I'm not so sure. From my early experience, I can't say that I see any "wow!" features that would drive a normal person (which I admittedly am not ... in the tech sense, anyway) to jump on the upgrade bandwagon. I'd say you can take your time moving to Office 2010.

Of course everyone will have to upgrade at some point. Microsoft will make sure of that. - Mike