They have unified the UI for all the Office apps. And then a million of minor details. Probably normal users won't see them much, but they are nice to have if you are a power user. Also, no idea if 2003 or 2007 will work with the Office Live documents.

I have to wait for all my addons to be compatible, the features aren't that stunning to have me running out to part with that kind of money   One thing I have to say is that office remains pretty unfortunately priced. 

http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/buy/office-2010-which-suite-is-right-for-you-FX101825640.aspx

Home/Student will run ya a buck fifty.  Add an extra 100 and some change, and you get home and student with outlook.  Seriously?  Outlook is worth a hundred bucks?  Like:  who would really want to spend that kind of money on Outlook of all things? 

I really wish they'd let me just build my own a la carte package. 

Dr guy:  I can't speak to the other applications, because I would never use them, but the quick and dirty on Excel's new features:

-http://www.powerpivot.com/videos.aspx   Power Pivot

-Onboard support for some sparklines, though I think the pros will still use SfE (http://sparklines-excel.blogspot.com/) for quite some time. 

-Improved conditional formatting. 

In addition to that, I know there were some efforts made to automate some aspects of reporting but that likely won't come up for home users and otherwise will require some time with the IT department before it gets rolled out:) 

Larry:  The ribbon still is a point of contention.  I rather like it, but I know quite a few people who would sooner chew broken glass than nod the ribbon.  Although, from an Excel only perspective:  07 is vastly superior to 03, so you're kind of stuck.  

Thanks Dan_I.  It will probably prove very useful to some, but not for the average joe.  As for the ribbons, I figure we just have to get use to it.  I think it is just a matter of comfort.  I was very comfortable with the old style menus, and just have to learn how to navigate ribbons.

In that, Microsoft help still sucks, but at least Google (or Bing) is at your fingertips.

I might at least consider it then, but I wouldn't bet on that happening. So I'll keep on using Office XP/2002 on Win7, which works just fine.

Buying office once is plenty enough anyway--there hasn't exactly been any must-have progress in word processing and spreadsheet software in the past decade, after all.

After having to use Access 07, I can say that it's not just a matter of comfort--the ribbon is just bad UI. You still have to swap ribbon modes constantly and dig around for certain functions just to get stuff done, which defeats half the point of it. The ribbon is only practical to use in apps that have few enough functions to put them all on there at once.

Well, for those of us with old version, the outlook still works.  I have not tried mixing versions of office, but at $130 for outlook, it is worth a try if I ever do decide to upgrade (or I should say when MS forces us to because of docx, y and z changes).

I have found the acceleration of Office 2010 to be well worth the upgrade.  It's night and day.    

Yay good thing too, new laptops this year will have it

although I question the need for the new 2010 version when they have launched a web version, and since 2007 is pretty good I don't know why they are even bother.

I D/L'd & installed OO a year or two ago but had problems with it properly formatting my existing Word docs & templates so went back to MSO.  Admittedly, I use highly formatted docs with tables & columns, but OO advertises itself as able to read & write .doc files.  I seem to recall some odd crash issues as well, but someone who's used it more recently may be a better critic.

Open Office is a passable alternative if your word-processing and presentations are not part of your professional career.  I say passable because documentation in Open Office is ... bad.  Say what you will about Microsoft's UI choices and software design, at least with their product a few seconds of quality time with their help-files will get you towards what you want to do.  With Open Office, that's not the case by a longshot.  Lack of documentation, tool tips, or stability doing anything remotely exotic feature-wise are all problems with Open Office.

That said, free is hard to beat.

Well... they could pay me to use it.

I might have to look at getting 2010, since as a student I can get it for $13.

The ribbon is now customizable, for those who don't know - you can ararrange the various tabs and items and add/delete/hide them as well.

"You still have to swap ribbon modes constantly and dig around for certain functions just to get stuff done, which defeats half the point of it.

Dig where? 99% of the functionality is under one of the tabs. That's not much digging. Not any more than the countless menus and dialog boxes 2003 and below had.

As far as Outlook goes . . .

I have mixed feelings.

On one hand, I'm stuck with it because I haven't replaced my Palm T|X with a smart phone yet.

On the other hand, web based email / PIM really is accessible anywhere.

But - web based email / PIM also requires 100% uptime on the internet. And, frankly, the functionality still severely lags behind downloadable clients.

IMO email and personal information management is still quite a mess, online or offline.