It was bound that Microsoft's main cash cows would suffer the same fate when it comes down to development milestones slipping into the wild from third-party testers. Well over a month ahead of Office 2010 Technical Preview's availability deadline, the bits have leaked and are now available for download from various sources, including torrent trackers. In this manner Office 2010, formerly codenamed Office 14, joins Windows 7, which has had all major development milestones as well as numerous interim builds leaked ahead of the official releases.

Earlier this year, Microsoft announced that it had settled on the final brand under which it would release Office 14 to the market. Subsequently, at Tech-Ed 2009, the Redmond company indicated that the first taste of Office 2010 would be made available at the start of July 2009. Yet, over 40 days ahead of the Technical Preview delivery date, the Community Technology Preview of Office 2010 is available to all users with a BitTorrent client.

Illegal sources of downloads are offering both the 32-bit and the 64-bit flavors of Office 2010 Build 14.0.4006.1010. Chances are that the bits, labeled Technology Preview 1, are indeed the CTP of Office 2010 that will ship on July 1st. Of course nothing is set in stone, and the release that Microsoft will end up delivering at the start of July might differ from the ones leaked on peer-to-peer (P2P) networks.

Office 2010 is tailored to the x86 and x64 editions of Windows XP SP3, Windows Vista and Windows 7, according to Microsoft. Office 2010 Technical Preview 1 (TP1) offers the Plus edition, which comes to the table with Excel 2010, InfoPath 2010, OneNote 2010, Outlook 2010, PowerPoint 2010, Publisher 2010, Access 2010 and Word 2010, but also Project Professional 2010, SharePoint Designer 2010 and Visio Professional 2010.

Users who don't want the potential headaches and risks associated with pirated Office 2010 are free to sign up for the Office 2010 Technical Preview. The CTP will be a limited, invitation-only testing program, and there is no guarantee that signing up will actually produce an invitation.