Office 2013 gets the Windows 8 treatment, with a touch-friendly interface and a sparser look, as well as new features in every application. So while the main thing you'll notice is the new look, there are some really interesting features under the hood.
As usual, there are multiple versions of Office 2013, but this time around the different editions are not just about whether you're using them at home or in a business or which applications are included.
Buying Office 2013
Even if you decide you want to buy a pay-for-it-once-and-keep-it copy of Office 2013 in a box, you won't find a DVD inside – just a product key to unlock the software you download. (Buyers in "developing countries with limited internet access" can still get a DVD, but that's not an option in the UK or US.)
If you prefer to pay an annual subscription to get extra features, Office 365 editions let you download the Office 2013 applications onto multiple PCs (or share them with your family).
For home users, there are four options. Buy the boxed software and you can put it on one PC. Office Home and Student 2013 with Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote costs £109.99/$139.99; Office Home and Business 2013 adds Outlook and costs £219.99/$219.99. Office Professional 2013 has the full set of programs for £389.99/$399.99; Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, Outlook, Access and Publisher.
You can download the Office programs temporarily on another PC if you're away from your usual PC (even if it already has another version of Office installed). So if you have a document on a USB drive or on SkyDrive that you need to edit on another PC, and using the Office Web Apps from SkyDrive doesn't provide of the features you need (like seeing revision marks in a tracked document you're collaborating on), you can use Office on Demand to get the full version of Word in just a few minutes.
You manage all this from the revamped Office.com and there's a link to your account there in the ribbon of all the Office applications. (To activate the Skype minutes you have to link your account to the Microsoft account you're using for Office 365, which can be done on the Office.com site.)
Office 365 Home Premium adds several more designs that you can use to decorate the Office ribbon, including doodled circles, lunchbox sandwiches, pens and pencils, cartoon fish and spring leaves. It's a little odd, but there's something for most tastes (including a blank ribbon).
Once the programs are installed you can also choose from three Office themes (click your account picture at the top of the screen and choose Account Settings or open File > Account. The default white gives you the clean look you might have seen in the Customer Preview or in Office RT; pale Ggrey adds a light tint to the ribbon and other panes and dark grey is a high contrast colour scheme that puts a mid grey on the ribbon and panes and replaces most of the accent colours in each application with a very dark grey.