Microsoft Office 2013
As of the 25th November 2013, all new PC systems will be supplied with Microsoft Office 2013, replacing the previous version, Office 2010.
The new version provides stability improvements and enhanced features, but more importantly it is available as a 64-bit native application suite.
The 64-bit version of Office will be installed on all new PC systems (which are also supplied with 64-bit Windows 7). Both the 32-bit and 64-bit versions require Windows Vista or newer to run, and will not run on Windows XP.
Although the new version of Office does use a variant of the Metro / Modern user interface from Windows 8, extensive user testing has satisfied both us and our customers that the new version is intuitive and easy to use. On this basis, we are therefore switching the baseline install to Office 2013.
We will continue to support existing Office 2010 installations for the forseeable future, however please note that support for Office 2003 ends on the 8th April 2014.