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The announcement was made by Bill Gates at the Windows Hardware Engineering Conference in Seattle.

This is the first time that Microsoft has made beta products of its flagship products available simultaneously. The aim is to allow companies and individuals to test the products running together and provide feedback and allow for tweaks in the software before the official launches kick off towards the end of the year.

'The release of these three betas is a significant milestone for Microsoft and a major step toward delivering the platforms that will drive the next decade of computing,' Gates said. 'The combination of these innovative platform technologies and the new hardware and software being developed by our partners will make PCs and other devices more powerful, more useful and more intelligent for businesses today and into the future'.

The company points to four goals in its new range of products: making it easier for people to collaborate on work together; better content protection both at the system and user levels;

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better search tools; and improved security.

Among the products available as part of the Office 2007 beta for download are Office Professional, SharePoint, One Note, Outlook, Project and Visio. Redmond is also offering a new version of the Groove remote workgroup software that it acquired (along with software guru Ray Ozzie) in March of 2005. The company is also offering new versions of SharePoint, Groove and Project Server.

A word of warning if you fancy trying out any of this software. The download for Microsoft Office Professional Plus 2007 is 550MB. On a 1MB broadband line Microsoft estimates it will take nine minutes to download. On a 56K modem? Don't ask. Similarly, the 'Groove' server is 300MB and the SharePoint Server 1Gbyte. In total the desktop software alone amounts to over 2GB worth of download - enough to hit the cap on a broadband connection. Alternatively, Microsoft will send you a DVD with the software on it for a small fee.

Office Beta testers and MSDN subscribers can also download the Vista Beta 2 from today. A 'Customer Preview Program' will be generally available in 'weeks'.

More info on the Office preview can be found here.

As Office 2007 will feature new file formats for Word, Excel and PowerPoint. Microsoft is also offering compatibility packs for users of Office XP and 2003, but not Office 2000.

Microsoft says it will not provide technical support for Beta 2. The build is set to expire on 1st February 2007.