There’s little doubt that Outlook is the most physically changed of all the applications: in particular, Outlook 2010 now has the Ribbon properly integrated into its interface. Here, we take a quick-fire tour of the new-look.

We’ll start with the Calendar view. The colour coding isn’t new, nor the ability to view two calendars simultaneously, but the Home tab now offers quick access to far more options very quickly. Here are the other tabs:

When it comes to actually being invited to a meeting, you could see something like this:

It’s worth noting those five avatars at the bottom. If I had photos of the five other attendees in Outlook, these would appear there. I can also click on that upwards arrow next to the avatars and see this…

In an organisation with SharePoint implemented it can go far beyond pics. I’d be able to see if someone was online and available to instant message, get their social-networking updates and all sorts of glorious updates. For all those companies that don’t have SharePoint implemented, you’re more likely to see something like this:

So right now I can see what meetings online editor Barry Collins and I share, but that’s about it. Apart from Barry’s photo, which is always good to see, obviously. In theory, however, I should be able to see all the email exchanges we’ve had and what attachments Barry has sent me; Simon Jones talks more about the People Pane (to give this feature its official name) in today’s blog entry.

Below, you can see all the tabs on offer when you’re viewing the Inbox (click on them to make the images larger):

Then we come to the Contacts Ribbon:

And finally, the Tasks Ribbon: