On Wednesday, Microsoft announced a free, advertising-supported, reduced-functionality version of Office 2010 - the forthcoming version of the company's productivity suite scheduled for a next-year release.

Dubbed the Office Starter 2010, the free version will allow users the advantage of viewing, editing, and creating documents via Office Word Starter 2010 and Office Excel Starter 2010. The announced version will be a substitute for Microsoft Works, and will be offered only on new PCs sold by OEMs.

Talking about the Office Starter 2010 version in a blog post on Wednesday, Takeshi Numoto - Corporate VP for Office - said that the reason behind Microsoft's announcement of the Office Starter 2010 edition is to provide new PC buyers an exposure to Office 2010.

As such, the ad-supported free version is fundamentally a new Product Key Card that would enable users to upgrade to one of three full versions of Microsoft Office.

In addition, the key number will also initiate the new Click-To-Run technology that would allow users to download and purchase Office 2010 directly from Office. com, and start using Office "in a matter of minutes," as Microsoft claims!

Over and above the recently-announced ad-supported edition - and the five Office 2010 editions that are in Technical Preview since July this year - Microsoft is also working on the Office Web Apps: Web versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote.