Microsoft Aiming To Launch Touch-Friendly Office 15 On Monday?

Based on the technical preview and leaks since then, I'd say don't get your hopes up.

It looks like they added a bunch of touchy-feely/zoomy features that add nothing for the desktop user who has a normal sized screen and keyboard.  Expect more stuff to be hidden by default and to go digging for it.

I honestly don't know what Microsoft's thinking.  It's as if we've been driving around in Cadillac's but suddenly everyone's talking about minibikes - so Cadillac decides to also make minibikes and standardize the controls for all of their new vehicles to be handlebars and three-speed manual foot shift levers.

It will definitely be cheaper.  No one's going to pay full price for Office on a tablet, and what you're getting on the desktop is going to feel like a tablet app.

I'll willing to try anything new. I'm not one of those "I hate change" type of people. As a IT admin though I will have to see if it's worth it in the business environment. Based off what i read and seen so far it doesn't look like it will be good....unless you can drastically change a lot of the layout etc. with group policy. But it looks like W7 is still the way to go. As a IT admin it's always best to wait a few years before making ANY changes for a OS to see how it preforms. A lot of people simply don't like things because they hate change, meaning they hate everything about it. I will have to see if this is the case or not.

But I'll wait until release and see how it goes. As a personal home user I'll download it and make it my main OS and give it a shot when it comes out.

I agree with the wait and see, though keep in mind there are people who hated every version of MS Office for like the past decade. Things like ribbon menus are just something you either love or hate, but most people would likely just care if they can still do the core stuff and backwards file compatibility isn't broken.

While some new features seem interesting at least, like Password Protected Change Tracking. Outlook will have a Weather Bar for the Calendar that'll help with the full screen nature of Metro. Inline Replies in Outlook, so no longer will it pop open a new Window to reply to email.

Excel will have a tool for filtering data in a timeline, the ability to convert Roman numerals to Arabic numerals, and the integration of advanced trigonometric functions.

Word is suppose to get the capability of inserting video and audio online as well as the broadcasting of documents on the Web.

Some other new features are suppose to be announced on the 16th...

The "backstage" file menu is suppose to remain about the same from Office 2010 though. Also support for Office Open XML Strict starting with version 15 and can read and write ODF 1.2.

While it's also likely they'll have more desktop accommodations for the x86 version than the RT version will have, but that's one of the reasons to wait and see.