Office 2010 Beta Available

Office 2010, SharePoint 2010, Project 2010 and Visio 2010 have all reached the Beta milestone and are now available for download.

Remember how sometimes you felt smug when you were running Windows 7 Beta at least 6 months before your colleagues and friends? Well, you can feel it once again!

What’s new in the Office system?

On Monday 9 November, Microsoft Exchange 2010 became the first product launch in wave of innovation across the Office system. The first half of 2010 will see this wave continue with the release of Office 2010, SharePoint 2010, Project 2010 and Visio 2010 .

• Microsoft Office 2010 provides rich and powerful new ways to deliver work. New features include enhanced tools, customisable templates, photo editing and the ability to work with multiple people from different locations at the exact same time using new co-authoring capabilities. By offering more ways to access files from virtually anywhere, Office 2010 gives users greater control. Learn More
• Microsoft SharePoint 2010 enables organisations to connect and empower people through an integrated set of rich features. SharePoint 2010 facilitates business collaboration in its broadest sense and helps colleagues, partners and customers to work together in new and effective ways. Learn More
• Microsoft Project 2010 provides teams and organisations of all sizes with the right project collaboration tools, and a pathway to step up to more advanced Project and Portfolio Management capabilities as their needs evolve. Learn More
• The advanced diagramming tools of Microsoft Visio 2010 help you simplify complexity with intuitive and professional-looking diagrams, dynamic and data-driven visuals and new ways to share these on the Web in real-time. Learn More

In addition, with this beta we are unveiling several new features and products:

• Office Web Apps for business customers, available through SharePoint Server, allows SharePoint sites to host browser-based Web Apps accessible from virtually anywhere.
  To me, this is one of the most significant developments of SharePoint 2010 – you can provide Office applications, from your SharePoint server, to your students whether they are on campus or off. Which means they can start a piece of work on campus using Office on a library computer, and then continue it at home using their laptop – either using Office if they have it, or Office Web Apps in a browser.
  
• Outlook Social Connector, a new feature that brings communications history and social networking feeds into the Outlook experience.

Happy downloading