Office 2013 Customer Preview: Touchscreen Ready and Cloud Friendly

Continuing with our earlier coverage of Office 2013 in Aug issue, here is a look at the recently released Customer Preview. We installed the same on an Asus Eee PC 1201T netbook running Windows 8 Release Preview to check how it works.

Visit the Microsoft official site, sign up for the preview, using a Windows Live ID. As of the time of writing, only the Office 365 Home Premium Preview was offered. This is valid for a personalized experience on upto 5 household PCs or tablets. Applications available are Word, PowerPoint, Excel, Outlook, OneNote, Publisher and Access. You will need either Windows 7 or Windows 8 Release Preview as your installed operating system to get started.

The setup executable file is thin (requires a working Internet connection) and hence small enough at less than half a megabyte for the 32-bit English edition's setup provided by default. A 64-bit edition is available (as well as a choice of English or Spanish languages) but Microsoft recommends the use of the 32-bit edition in order to maintain compatibility with add-ins.

At the first glance itself you can easily make out what the UI changes would revolve around, Metro. Yes, the familiar Office logo itself has now been redesigned to resemble a Metro tile viewed from a perspective similar to the angle of the new Windows 8 logo. Setup will initially configure settings, after which it will stream application features.

We chose 'None' here. Note the two emoticons at the top-right. They are meant to act as feedback tools for Microsoft to indicate whether you liked (or otherwise) the installation process. The next page introduces the user to SkyDrive.

Also note the sign-in to the user account, visible at the top-right. The slide show proceeds in a wizard-like manner, explaining things about Office 2013 and SkyDrive as you move to the next slide, with the options to go back or exit at any time. In the meantime, setup finishes the installation.Which applications do you want to know more about? How was your experience with the preview? Let us know!