Microsoft introduced Office 2013 Customer Preview

At the conference in San Francisco, Steve Ballmer with the words "We feel like in the 1995th" announced the release of the Customer Preview version of one of the most popular products of the company - Microsoft Office.

3 years have passed since the release of the previous version. Office 2013, also known as Office 15, does not support Windows XP and Windows Vista. It is not surprising that the new Office has a Metro-oriented interface. Although in many details the new package feels focused on the tablets (for example, the presence of TouchMode, in which the controls are increasing in size), the key features remained suitable for use on a personal computer. Office components will be included in Windows-based tablets and phones, the office suite itself can determine on which device it is installed and what input tools are available.
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Changes affected not only the interface and the range of supported versions of Windows, Microsoft continues the new separation strategy from personal computers in favor of a whole ecosystem of various devices and radically changes the way the product is distributed, focusing on its own cloud services. The new Office will be offered as part of the Office 365 subscription.

Microsoft created a product API based on HTML and JavaScript and available to third-party developers, but no one has yet refused Visual Basic. The new version of Office cloud services has support for downloading contacts from social networking services, but Office 365 itself also has some social components in its cloud structure: “friends”, status updates, and subscriptions to update them. Now you can find out who edits the documents.



Of course, the new office suite will be available for purchase on an ongoing basis, but Microsoft is focusing on distributing Office by subscription. Buying Office in a store can come down to purchasing a coupon to download a product from the Microsoft cloud, with which you can install the package, for example, in the Home Premium version on five machines and get 20 GB in SkyDrive storage, Skype bonuses are also possible. Of course, the user's personal settings will always be stored in the cloud, which will make it very easy to change working devices. The new Office saves files to SkyDrive by default, making it easy to share the necessary documents.

Such changes are quite expected: according to some estimates, Office holds up to 70% of the market, but after Office 2007, users increasingly prefer to stay on older versions without feeling significant changes. It will be interesting to see if a regular user will switch to cloud subscriptions or prefer traditional permanent licenses.

www.office.com/preview