Are office upgrades ever?

Wht I read makes me think Yes. Office on the web will make working with others easier.

Hard to say, since we don't know the price. That said, I haven't upgraded my Apple office applications, Pages, Numbers and Keynote, either, because the changes to those products are merely incremental improvements that, at some point, I'll believe are cumulatively worth paying for a new version. It will be my first upgrade since Office 2003—after trying the "ribbon" I decided not to upgrade.

Microsoft Office has a huge step in front of it: To make collaboration more secure than one can expect from Google Docs or Zoho's office services. Microsoft needs to make the online/offline distinction disappear within the Office applications, while making it clear that Office documents stored in the cloud are confidential by refusing place ads in proximity to personal or professional documents.

If Office 2010 makes cloud service a "free" ad-free part of the package, the price of an upgrade will be worthwhile, especially compared to the high hidden cost of Google Docs. I'd feel a lot better not seeing ads related to topics I am working on, because Google has looked at the content of my work and grabbed ads from its inventory that seem to match my interests.

Agreeing with godsdog:

As it is, I'm a Mac user and face a conundrum: Should I shell out money for a potentially bloated Microsoft Office Suite vs. using the minimalist Google Docs, Open Office? Well, since I share this computer with my family, I find that Powerpoint, Excel isn't something that the freemium services match up -- Microsoft does. Since Microsoft is releasing an ad-supported version of their apps -- I am tempted to try out their stripped-down versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote in the cloud.

I hope there is an ad-free option. The Financial Times is reporting more about advertising experiments by Microsoft this morning. Ideally, and it should be doable because Microsoft has so many "editions" of its apps, I'd like to buy the Office suite with ad-free online collaboration. That ad-free condition should extend anywhere my docs go. Yes, the recipient gets "free" access, but it also emphasizes the value of ad-free and encourages them to upgrade to get more privacy.

Oh, sorry, here is the FT link:http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/f7b19fda-709f-11de-9717-00144feabdc0.html

At least Microsoft asks for upgrade fees only once every three or four years. Apple's word processing and presentation apps are upgraded every year for $80. By the time Microsoft's new Office comes out, the price for the two are the same.

At first I raised an eyebrow when I read that the online version is going to be free, but I agree with RedLetterDuke- I'll test out the web version of Word and PowerPoint to determine whether it will be worth buying the PC-based version. We'll have to wait and see whether the price is fair for the product, but in terms of quality, I think Microsoft has made a lot of worthwhile and necessary improvements to maintain/attract users. In addition to the concurrent editing, Word will also offer a Paste Preview option (to preview the formatting of content before inserting it into the document), better ways to edit images, a customized Ribbon interface and, with PowerPoint, you can import videos - all changes that both basic and advanced users can appreciate.

Good to see that OneNote, the note-taking application for Office, will be part of all the Office packages. That's very useful on a tablet and with a keyboard.

It should be interesting to see.  They definitely need to respond to google docs and open office, but they still have a feature lead in other areas.