14 DAY TRIAL // The first official Community Technology Preview of the next iteration of the Office System is scheduled to go live in July 2009. But even on July 1st, potential testers should know that it's by no means too late to still sign up for the Office 2010 Technical Preview. The Office 2010 the Movie website is still up and running, now featuring new video behind the scenes content, and so is the Technical Preview registration page. In fact, on June 30, 2009, a member of the Visio 2010 Technical Beta team indicated that Microsoft was still accepting participants into the program.
“We’re excited to announce that the Visio team is taking nominations to participate in the Visio 2010 Technical Beta program! We will be sending out a limited number of invitations to download and install Visio 2010 Technical Preview in July. The team is excited to get valuable feedback and early testing from our community that will help us make this a great release. Here is your opportunity to nominate yourself to participate in the program (space is limited). If you’re interested, please go here to sign up for Microsoft Connect and apply to be part of the Technical Preview. When asked, select Visio as the application you’re most interested in testing (question 13 on the survey),” the Visio team representative revealed.
In order to get an idea of what Office 2010 has in store for you, Office 2010 CTP on Windows 7 RC - 173 Screenshot Gallery contains an overall look at a pre-CTP release of the productivity suite. Back in May 2009, when it started accepting nominations for the Community Technology Preview of Office 2010, Microsoft indicated that the first CTP builds of the product formerly codenamed Office 14 would start shipping to testers at the start of July.
Of course, potential testers that have signed up via the Technical Preview registration page will be notified of their acceptance in the program in mid-July. Still, the Technical Preview program is limited, and simply signing up does not guarantee participation. Microsoft has already confirmed that a leaked preview build of Office 2010 is available in the wild.