Microsoft Office 2010 beta open to developers

 

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By Barry Collins

Posted on 17 Nov 2009 at 07:34

Microsoft has released the beta of Office 2010 to members of its TechNet and MSDN developer networks.

The next-generation Office suite has been available as a closed Technical Preview for a couple of months, but now Microsoft is confident enough to deliver the software to a far wider audience.

A full public beta will be announced later this week. Indeed, Microsoft has already created a website for the Office 2010 public beta, although the software is not yet available to download.

Both 32- and 64-bit versions of the Office 2010 suite are available from TechNet and MSDN, with the slightly heavier 64-bit version tipping the scales at 750MB.

The final version of the Office suite is expected to be launched in the first half of next year, alongside Microsoft's Office Web Apps, which are already available for test in a very limited form.

Although nowhere near as revolutionary as Office 2007, the Office 2010 suite includes a series of enhancements, including the arrival of the Ribbon interface in Outlook, the option to ignore irrelevant email threads, and improved photo/video handling in applications such as PowerPoint and Word.

We'll have a preview of the Office 2010 beta later this week.