If you’re running 64-bit Windows Vista or Windows 7 (or Server 2008 or Server 2008 R2), you can choose whether to the install 64-bit version of Office 2010 beta. (It is not compatible with 64-bit Windows XP.)

The advantages of the 64-bit version are that it lets you use additional memory installed on your computer – for example Excel 2010 workbooks can be bigger than 2GB. Project 2010 can work with very large projects consisting of many sub-projects. You also get enhanced security through Data Execution Prevention (DEP) by default.

But, not many people will actually need Excel Workbooks bigger than 2GB. If you ever made one, you could not store it in SharePoint – 2GB is SharePoint’s limit for any file – and you could not share it with anyone who wasn’t running 64-bit Office 2010 because they wouldn’t be able to open it.

Access databases with their code removed (split data & code in separate files) can’t be shared between 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Office and any VBA code may not be compatible between 32-bit and 64-bit versions, particularly where the code declares API calls to Windows or uses the new LongLong or LongPtr data types introduced in the 64-bit version.

Graphic elements may render more slowly in the 64-bit version of Office because 64-bit CPUs may lack MMX support for multimedia and communications.

The biggest problem by far is that ActiveX controls Add-Ins and COM DLLs written for 32-bit Office will not work with the new 64-bit version. Microsoft are due to release a new VSTO (Visual Studio Tools for Office) runtime which will bridge this gap for DLLs and Add-Ins written using VSTO but it isn’t available yet. Other manufacturers will have to test, possibly change, and re-issue their DLLs and Add-Ins in 64-bit versions to get them to work.

There are yet more problems if you try to work with web based solutions that use ActiveX controls. For instance SharePoint uses an ActiveX control to render SharePoint lists in Datasheet View. This view is not supported if you install the 64-bit version of Office 2010.

All in all, the 64-bit version of Office is useful to very few people and has many limitations. The vast majority of people will be much better off sticking to the 32-bit version.

Completely new in Outlook 2010 Beta is the People Pane. This appears below the Reading pane in the main window and in all the individual item windows. It shows thumbnail images, one for every person (or email address) associated with the item and lets you quickly access other items which are also associated with that person/address.

The contents shown in the People Pane are derived from the Windows Search index which is kept up to date as new items are created or arrive via email. When you first install Office 2010 Beta all your existing Outlook items must be re-indexed so don’t expect the People Pane to spring to life immediately but once indexing is complete all the other emails, attachments and meetings known for a person are just a click away.

The People Pane will connect to SharePoint Server 2010, if you have one in your organisation, to find data about a person and to other, as yet unspecified, social networks to get pictures and status updates for that person. If you have a mugshot for the person in your Outlook Contacts or a mugshot can be found on a social network, the People Pane will use that picture for the person. If not, you just get a generic grey person outline which makes it a little difficult to tell people apart. (The 64-bit version of Outlook seems to have a bug making it show the grey outline for everyone whether or not you have a mugshot for them.)

You can minimize or turn off the People Pane if you don’t subscribe to any social networks or you don’t want to see it and the company’s network administrator can tweak settings to deny access to external social networks if they don’t want users getting distracted by irrelevancies.

The People Pane is quick and convenient and is obviously Microsoft’s answer to add-ins such as Xobni – which does much the same things. It is interesting that the first comment to Tim’s blog posting about Outlook 2010 was from Matt Brezina, founder of Xobni. http://www.pcpro.co.uk/blogs/2009/11/18/microsoft-outlook-2010-in-pictures-backstage-view/ In it he advertised Xobni complete with the old quote from Bill Gates calling it “the next generation of social networking”.

I think Mr Brezina may be fighting a rear guard action to try to save his job and his company as the People Pane and the Outlook Social Connector do the vast majority of what Xobni does but they do it better. Just about the only useful thing that Xobni does which Outlook 2010’s People Pane doesn’t is that Xobni scrapes people’s phone numbers out of their signature blocks. However, it keeps this information to itself in its own proprietary data store along with any pictures you give it of your contacts. It would be a lot more useful if it would add the data it gleans to your Outlook contacts folder. At least then the data would synchronize with your mobile phone. Xobni also uses its own indexing technology rather than relying on the Windows Search index (so, if you install Xobni, you have two indexers running, slowing your computer down).

Most of the other stuff Xobni does is fairly useless, such as showing you a chart of what time of day you get emails from Fred Bloggs. I know Tim liked Xobni when he reviewed it. http://www.pcpro.co.uk/reviews/software/179265/xobni but I have to disagree and wrote about my reasons in my Advanced Office column in Issue 173 called “What’s the Point of Xobni”.

Now Microsoft have released beta test versions of Office 2010 and SharePoint 2010 we can start to see what they’ve been talking about in the “co-authoring” arena. SharePoint Foundation 2010 supports multiple people editing Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote documents at the same time. When you store your documents in a SharePoint document library, any number of people can open the document and they see who else is editing the document in the status bar. Your changes are bracketed with a blue line in the left margin and you get notifications when other people’s updates are available.

When you save your changes, you also get to see the other person’s changes that they have saved highlighted in green.

It seems that making small changes and saving often is the best way not to tread on each other’s toes.

In the Info section in Backstage (File | Info) you can see who is editing the document and send messages to them by email or by instant message (if you have Office Communicator). At the bottom of the Info section you can also see and manage all the different versions of the file, either autosaved or previous versions held in the SharePoint document library.

Co-authoring documents is going to be very useful for many people and it is good to see it is included in the free SharePoint Foundation 2010 and not reserved for SharePoint Server 2010 which will cost quite a lot of money.

As the information is a little difficult to take in, I thought I’d do a quick summary table.

The main changes are the reduction of the number of editions from eight to five and the fact that the Small Business Edition (which had more applications than Standard Edition) is retired and replaced by the new Home & Business Edition (which has fewer applications than Standard Edition). Another change is that Standard Edition is only going to be available through Volume Licensing.

Some very good news is that all editions will now carry OneNote. Hooray!

Update: Just for clarification, the spot against Web Apps in the table above is the right to run the new Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote web based applications on your own server hardware. Everyone will have access to the Web Apps free through Office Live or through a hosted subscription service.

Quince is a community tool that lets you explore and contribute to a growing library of UI Design Patterns – ways of designing a user interface to make it easier to use. Each pattern relates to a little piece of UI functionality, such as data validation, modal dialogs, filtering, etc and explains, with examples from real-world applications, when you might use that pattern and how you might implement it.

Users can contribute by adding text to say how they think the pattern might be changed or improved, adding extra examples or simply voting to say “I use this” so future users can see which patterns are popular.

You can explore the patterns in many ways, from an outline form where patterns are listed in-place or by tag relations which groups and connects patterns together to show how the patterns relate to one another. There are even RSS feeds so you can get alerts to newly entered patterns or comments.

If you’re thinking of designing an application, a quick browse round Quince may give you some good ideas for the user interface. If you’ve encountered problems with the usability of an application you designed, Quince may be able to suggest some simple changes to overcome the difficulties.

Anyone who has a passing interest in UI design should definitely look in on Quince. It is a fresh, modern UI design in itself and has potential to grow into an indispensible tool for UI designers and programmers from hobbyists to the big corporate players.

“This product is subject to strict US export control laws. Prior to providing access, we must validate whether you are eligible to receive it under an available US export authorization. Your request is being reviewed. Upon completion of this review, you will be contacted if we are able to give access. We apologize for any inconvenience.”

It’s a word processor, not the designs for a nuclear bomb. No, they’re easier to obtain.

After waiting a day you then get an email entitled “IBM Lotus Symphony 1 failure”

“Your business with IBM Lotus Symphony 1 is very important to us. We are sorry that your previous transaction with us did not go through. We have fixed this error in your account. Please return to the IBM Lotus Symphony 1 web site to resubmit your transaction. Thank you and sorry for the inconvenience.”

What failure? What error? What account? At least they include a URL in the email to get you back to the download page, where you have to give you name, email address and country again.

What a palaver.

Excel, like all good applications can be used entirely from the keyboard and often this is much faster than reaching for the mouse.

Everyone should know that the arrow (cursor) keys move the current focus or insertion point left, right, up or down and I hope they know that holding the Shift key down at the same time selects the characters, cells, etc in the given direction. Far fewer people, however, seem to know that holding the Ctrl+Arrow will take you to the edge of the current contiguous block of data, that Ctrl+Home takes you to the top left cell or that Ctrl+End moves focus to the bottom right cell of the current worksheet.

Here’s a quick summary of useful navigation keys for Excel.

In “End Mode” the next arrow key moves the focus to that edge of the current data range, the same as Ctrl+Arrow. If you press End and then Shift+Arrow, you select the cells to that edge of the data range, the same as Ctrl+Shift+Arrow.

To select the whole of the current data range, press Ctrl+Shift+* or Ctrl+A. Ctrl+A is a little more intelligent as it selects just table data, if focus is in a table. Pressing it a second time includes the table header. Pressing it a third time will select the whole sheet.

Bluetooth is the bane of my life at the moment. Designed to make quick and easy wireless connections between disparate devices it often fails to be quick, easy or indeed connect.

I have Jabra BT620 headphones for listening to music while I work without disturbing my colleagues. Every time I use them they connect in mono using the “handsfree” profile which gives tinny monophonic sound suitable for phone calls. To get stereo I have to go through the pairing process. Every time!

The Pioneer radio/SatNav system in our car will connect using Bluetooth to Mike’s phone to route phone calls to the car’s speakers and microphone. It will connect to my phone too but only so the phone can provide audio from its media player, a function it won’t do from Mike’s. What is even more annoying is that both phones are HTC TyTN II. Why can’t they both connect using both profiles? It is a mystery.