In a recent post from Alex Dubec, a Program Manager on the Office Trustworthy Computing Performance team, Alex answers your most pressing Office 2010 operating and system requirements question up front: CPU and RAM requirements are the same as for Office 2007.
You’re good even through current computers running Office 2003, but you may want to start checking into some ramp ups for your hardware pretty soon. It’s not that less significant hardware won’t run Office 2010; it’s just that your users won’t be happy for very long. Start planning now to avoid eventual mutiny.
And the good news about hardware requirements is they’re pretty minimal: if your hardware can open a 20 page report or handle scatterplots in Excel; basically, if you can run 2 or 3 simultaneous applications, you’re in. Sure, fast chips, more RAM, beefier hard drives, and cool new processors make for a fun and fast experience, but are they needed? Nah. You’ll be able to get the job done, without a lot of bells and whistles - at least not a lot according to today’s (seriously) minimal standards. In fact, Alex’s team is trying to make things simple. According to his blog, the difference between minimum and recommended requirements is confusing, possibly even misleading. So, let’s make it simple! With regard to CPU/Processor and RAM (that’s Random Access Memory) - basically the real requirements have doubled between 2003 and 2010, and nothing has changed from the 2007 500 MHz/256MB CPU/RAM requirements. I hope you’re really not surprised!
The next quote from the blog is good news - but I’m sorry, I have a cynical mind… it kinda makes me want to laugh. I’ll simply report and let you draw your own conclusions:
“One of the pieces of feedback we’ve received from customers is that they really, really hate having to buy new hardware every time a new version of Office is released. With that in mind, one of our goals for the Office 2010 was to make sure that the minimum hardware requirement would not increase from Office 2007. We invested in improving the customer experience on minimum-requirement hardware, and we regularly tested performance throughout the development cycle. Our footprint has gotten larger since Office 2007, but we’re proud to say that we’ve succeeded in keeping the CPU and RAM requirements the same as for Office 2007."
So, basically, these Microsoft cool guys tested things out on some hardware built in 2000 (yes, you read that right….) Results? They got minimal but still acceptable home use performance on a 500 MHz CPU and 256 MB of RAM computer. Breathe easier. Well, maybe not quite yet. Disk space requirements have gone up by about .5 gigabytes (were gigabytes around in 2000?). While we could sit here and yak about what that means esoterically, I would think it is a reasonable change, and one that should probably be expected given that pretty much everything today leaves a bigger footprint, because it can.
A few other “housekeeping” good notes, and some that I’ve wondered about hopefully! Yes, Ribbons will be in ALL of the Office 2010 applications. Hooray! A little more cautiously I can say this is the real, really, really it is, introduction to that 64-bit app, and I feel fairly certain when I say, “there’s no going back now.”
A BIG word about Graphic Processor Units (GPU). Remind yourself and your CIO that the whole 2010 thing is about making some advances. Office 2010 utilizes the GPU (not the CPU) to parallelize (their word, not mine), work and speed up performance. Office 2010? They designed for Microsoft® DirectX® 9.0c compliant graphics processors with 64 MB video memory, but a more intensive user is going to want bigger GPU guns. Apparently, there are some fun new PowerPoint features that will “sing” with better GPU capability - I’ll let you know more about that later this week. If you can’t wait, check it out at http://blogs.msdn.com/powerpoint/default.aspx. Likewise, you can get more server requirement details on the blog at http://blogs.technet.com/office2010/archive/2010/01/22/office-2010-system-requirements.aspx.
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