Office 2003 Turns 8 This Month, Time Upgrade to Office 2010

In just 10 days, Office 2003 will turn eight. There’s no better present that customers can give themselves the eighth anniversary of Office 2003 than an upgrade to Office 2010, according to Microsoft.

Office 2010’s is the Redmond company’s fastest selling release of the productivity suite, with a copy shipping each second to a customer around the world.

According to Chris Barry, director of Office Enterprise, Microsoft, users can’t simply go wrong by upgrading to Office 2010, as no less than nine out of every ten users that do stress that this is the best version of the product in the software giant’s history.

“A lot can happen in eight years. And, the world of productivity software is no different. Today, almost a decade after the launch of Office 2003, employees want to use the most recent tools to be fully productive on the go. They want to use a smart phone to get things done,” Barry said.

“They want to access their work and important documents confidently from anywhere. They want to balance busy professional lives with busy personal lives. It's against this backdrop of incredible technological change-a new norm-that we launched Office 2010.”

Office 2003’s eighth anniversary is on October 21, 2003, but this particular release still has a few years of life ahead of it.

The Redmond company will only discontinue support completely in 2014, a deadline which might tempt some users to ride Office 2003 for all it’s got. Microsoft says that this strategy would be a mistake, especially for businesses customers.

Industry analysts are advising businesses to start planning their upgrade Office 2010 and Windows 7 now to make sure companies don't run unsupported software in 2014. Additionally, analysts recommend that businesses plan a joint upgrade to Office 2010 and Windows 7 to save on IT labor costs and reduce lost user productivity,” Barry added.

According to data released by Microsoft, in excess of 100 million licenses of Office 2010 have already been sold to date. The company is currently working on Office 15, but there’s no telling when Office 2010’s successor hits commercial availability.