Office 2010 System Requirements

Customers have many questions about Office 2010, so may decisions related to Office deployment depend on their answers. I am creating a post to address the ones that come up most frequently on the technical side for Office 2010. I will keep adding FAQ' type posts with links in hopes that I can help search engines get people to the right places on key topics. Sysreq's are a big one, here's what I've got for you.

Q: What are the System Requirements for Office 2010?

A: With the caveat that this pertains to BETA software as of today, here's where we are at now with system requirements. Differences between 2007 and 2010 are highlighted in Red. Please understand that the 2010 requirements are subject to change, and will likely add additional detail as we move closer to general availability. The disk footprint is what has changed most significantly, but for the most part, the sysreq's are quite similar between the two versions. Recall that back when we shipped Office 2007 SP2, we made investments in performance, particularly with Outlook. We're hopeful that the release version of 2010 will continue improving performance, so that the experience with 2010 will improve across the board.

	Office 2010	Office 2007 (Enterprise Edition)
Processor	500 MHz processor; 1 GHz required for Outlook with Business Contact Manager	500 megahertz (MHz) processor or higher. 2 gigahertz (GHz) processor or higher and 1 GB RAM or higher recommended for OneNote Audio Search. Close-talking microphone required. Audio Search not available in all languages.
Memory	256 MB RAM; 512 MB recommended for graphics features, Outlook Instant Search, Outlook with Business Contact Manager, and certain advanced functionality.	256 megabyte (MB) RAM or higher. 512 MB RAM or higher recommended for Outlook Instant Search. Grammar and contextual spelling in Word is not turned on unless the machine has 1 GB memory.
Hard disk	3.5 GB available disk space	2 gigabyte (GB); a portion of this disk space will be freed after installation if the original download package is removed from the hard drive.
Display	1024x768 or higher resolution monitor	1024x768 or higher resolution monitor
Operating system	Windows XP with Service Pack (SP) 3 (32-bit operating system (OS) only) or Windows Vista with SP1, Windows 7, Windows Server 2003 R2 with MSXML 6.0, Windows Server 2008, or later 32- or 64-bit OS.	Microsoft Windows XP with Service Pack (SP) 2, Windows Server 2003 with SP1, or later operating system (note that Office 2007 SP2 is the minimum version supported for Windows 7).
Graphics	Graphics hardware acceleration requires a DirectX 9.0c graphics card with 64 MB or more video memory.	(not listed)
Internet	Windows® Internet Explorer® 7.0 or later, 32 bit browser only. Internet functionality requires an Internet connection.	Internet Explorer 6.0 or later, 32 bit browser only. Internet functionality requires Internet access (fees may apply).

 

FAQ: I have 64-bit hardware. Should I install Office 2010 64-bit or Office 2010 32-bit?

a: With the 64-bit version, advanced users will benefit from increased memory utilization of 64-bit hardware. The transition to 64-Bit version will require 32-bit applications and add-ins to be recompiled to 64-bit, however, the leap will offer advanced users exponentially larger memory addresses required for large datasets and intensive computations. For the best compatibility I would recommend 32-bit Office 2010 for both 32-bit and 64-bit Operating Systems. Office 64-bit is optimized for advanced data analysis scenarios that most users don't require.