The 20 Most Innovative Products of the Year

Always intriguing, often useful, and sometimes surprising, these 20 products showcase some of the best in tech this year.

PC World Editors

A PC that's half desktop, half notebook. An operating system that runs entirely on the Web. A radically made-over office suite. A thin, superstylish handheld with both Wi-Fi and a usable QWERTY keyboard. Our Innovations Award winners exemplify the best kinds of breakthroughs--ones you can get right now.

1. Microsoft Office 2007

Photograph: Marc Simon

Innovation? Microsoft? Yes, we were surprised, too, but the Redmond giant's latest upgrade of the world's most popular productivity suite introduces several new features that revolutionize how people work with documents (see our review). The most striking change is a "ribbon" at the top of the interface that replaces the traditional cascading menus and taskbars, and can expose functions you never knew were there. Through the suite's handy new Live Preview feature, you can see how formatting changes, for example, will affect your document prior to your making them. You get greater XML-format support, too. Prices range from $149 for the Home and Student edition to $679 for the Ultimate edition.