David Flynn14 May 2009, 3:45 PM
Want to get your hands on the next-gen Office suite? Microsoft is now accepting public registrations for its invitation-only preview of Office 2010.
Microsoft has opened the doors on its ‘
technical preview’ beta of Office 2010.
Applicants can sign up to what Microsoft calls its
waitlist for the limited rollout, with invitees to be notified “in early to mid July”.
The Technical Preview will be contain a beta of Office Professional Plus 2010 edition which includes the 2010 versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote in both their desktop and new browser-based Office Web App forms.
Also in the mix will be Outlook Access, Publisher, InfoPath, Viso and SharePoint Workspace 2010, which is the new name for the document collaboration program which Microsoft acquired in March 2005. (That deal also delivered Groove’s founder and Lotus Notes creator Ray Ozzie, who a year later replaced Bill Gates as Microsoft’s Chief Software Architect).
Like the final Office 2010 release the preview will be available in both 32-bit and 64-bit versions and run on Windows XP SP3, Windows Vista, and Windows 7. The technical preview is expected to be followed by a broad public beta before the end of the year, ahead of Office 2010’s debut around the middle of next year.
Microsoft is also playing the street-cred card of being a funky bunch of geeks at
Office 2010: The Movie, which features a teaser trailer for the suite. And kudos to ’em: it’s a simple but smile-inducing little piece of fun.