14 DAY TRIAL // The latest development milestone of Office 2010 has made it into the wild, even though Microsoft never intended to have the general public get their hands on the release. Earlier this week, the Redmond company revealed that the next iteration of the Office System reached a key milestone in the evolution to RTM, namely the Release Candidate stage. Subsequently, Office 2010 RC Build 14.0.4734.1000 was leaked and made available for download in the wild via BitTorrent trackers and warez websites.
In fact, it was just a day after Microsoft made available the Office 2010 RC Build 14.0.4734.1000 bits to the members of its Technology Adoption Program that the release leaked. Users intending to grab Build 14.0.4734.1000 from illegal third-party sources should be well aware of the risks implied by such an action. In fact, an earlier development milestone of Office 2010 dating back to 2009 was used by attackers to spread malware. The leaked release came bundled with malicious code which unsuspecting users installed on their own systems along with the Office 2010 bits.
This time around, both the 32-bit (x86) and the 64-bit (x64) flavors of Office 2010 Professional Plus Build 4734.1000 are offered by third-party sources illegally. Microsoft has made it clear when it offered the RC of Office 2010 that the new version was intended exclusively for a select pool of testers, and that it had no plans to offer the Release Candidate to the public.
Microsoft is now at approximately five months from the general availability of Office 2007’s successor. The Redmond company has confirmed officially that the final version of Office 2010 will be offered to customers for purchase in June 2010. At the same time, when I asked the company about the upcoming RTM deadline for the next generation of the productivity suite, a Microsoft representative declined to offer a date. When the first leaked details on Office 2010 RC Build 14.0.4734.1000 were published, the release was incorrectly labeled as RTM-Escrow instead of RC.