Whilst it may have taken a bit of time to get some word, Betanews received confirmation from a Microsoft spokesperson that June will be the ship month for the next installment of Microsoft Office.

During the company's PDC 2009 conference in Los Angeles, many thought that the final ship date would have been announced then.  Many of the conference's attendees were left wondering what would make Office 2010 worth the upgrade and what would not be included in Office Web Apps that would be in Office 2010.  Microsoft's senior communications director, Janice Kapner explained that to an extent, this is still being determined by users.

Kapner stated, "If you think about it, we have 500 million users, we talk to them a lot about what it is they do and don't do, and will and won't do.  This is our first shipment of the Web Apps, but we've been very realistic about how we think people will use these things, and try to supply features and functionality that will support these usage scenarios."  

While Office Web Apps will be free for use by the general public, it is appearing more and more that that program will not be intended for creative purposes beyond the usual documents.  

"It's very much [a case of], do we push all of the functionality of Word into the cloud when we know people aren't going to use it for things like a big, rich term paper?  No.  We'll continue to add functions and features as people's usage of cloud-based solutions evolve [and] so will our Web Apps," she explained.  

So if you're looking to do more than just the basic document preparation, then Office 2010 may be worth a look.