Microsoft's latest incarnation of it's office productivity suite, Office 2010 has reached RTM (Release to Manufacturing)status today. Disks will begin burning for retail sale, and OEM's (Original Equipment Manufacturers) will begin creating images to be pre-installed on new PC's.

Office 2010 is Microsoft's entry into the online battle with Google to compete with Google on it's own turf, the Internet. The desktop version of Office 2010 allows documents to saved online via Windows Live SkyDrive. In addition to the desktop productivity apps, there will be a Web Office component, that has many of the features of the desktop versions of Word, Excel, Powerpoint and OneNote. This allows users to seamlessly transition from desktop Office apps to Web Office and then back, keeping the actual documents in the cloud on SkyDrive.

We are still looking at June before consumers will be able to order or download Office 2010, although it is currently available for pre-order. The rollout schedule from an MSDN blog looks like this:

April 22 - Available as download via MSDN
April 27 - Volume License customers who have software assurance
May 1 - Volume License customers that don't have software assurance
June 2010 - Available for retail purchase.

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