14 DAY TRIAL // It won’t be long now until Microsoft makes available the public Beta of Office 2010. This, just in case you needed an incentive to steer right clear of the leaked copies of Office 2010 Beta, which have been made available for download in the wild. However, it must be noted that Microsoft has not yet begun to offer Office 2010 Beta. What the company did do was launch the official website for the first public development milestone in the evolution of the next iteration of the Office System. (via Long Zheng)
At the time of this article, Microsoft was presenting the following message to users attempting to download the Beta for the successor of Office 2007: “The Office 2010 Beta will be available soon. Please come back later and try again.”
When the Beta downloads will become live, early adopters will be able to test-drive Office Home & Business 2010 beta (includes: Excel, PowerPoint, Office Web Apps, OneNote, Outlook, and Word); Office Professional 2010 beta (includes: Access, Excel, Office Web Apps, OneNote, Outlook, PowerPoint, and Publisher) and Office Professional Plus 2010 beta (Volume licensing only – includes: Access, Communicator, Excel, Infopath, Office Web Apps, OneNote, Outlook, PowerPoint, Publisher, and SharePoint Workspace).
The Office 2010 Beta website brings to the table additional content, including descriptions for top components such as Word, PowerPoint, Excel and Outlook, free images, free templates and even support. The website also streamlines access to the Office web Apps, Cloud-based applications that are designed as online extensions of Office 2010 products, offering only basic functionality.
“Microsoft Office Web Apps are free online companions to Word, Excel, and PowerPoint that give you the freedom to view, create, and edit documents from a supported Internet browser (Internet Explorer, Firefox, and Safari),” Microsoft reveals. “Before you can start using Office Web Apps, you must install the Office 2010 Beta.”