Public Betas for Office 2010, Project 2010, Visio 2010, and SharePoint Server 2010 Download

As expected, the public betas for Office 2010, Project 2010, Visio 2010, and SharePoint Server 2010 have now been posted for download by Microsoft. The beta is available in seven languages (more than any other Office beta program in the past): English, Spanish, Japanese, Simplified Chinese, Russian, French, and German. Office Mobile 2010 (which includes mobile versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote and, SharePoint Workspace Mobile 2010) is available for download from the Windows Marketplace for Mobile for Windows Mobile 6.5 phones.

At the time of writing, the Office 2010 Beta webpage on Microsoft.com still gives the following message: "The Office 2010 Beta will be available soon. Please come back later and try again." The download links are starting to appear in other places though. For example, the Microsoft Office Professional Plus 2010 Beta (which includes Word, Excel PowerPoint, OneNote, Outlook, Access, Publisher, InfoPath, Communicator, and SharePoint Workspace) is available in 32-bit and 64-bit over at Microsoft.com/Office/2010 (registration required). The portal that seems like the best starting point for learning more about the whole 2010 wave of Microsoft products is actually Microsoft.com/2010. In addition to the Office 2010 beta, the Microsoft Download Center has the rest of the downloads, so we've compiled the following list of all the related links Microsoft has posted:

For reference, here are the Office 2010 system requirements:

Computer and processor: 500MHz processor or higher
Memory: 256MB of RAM or higher
Hard disk: 3GB; a portion of this disk space will be freed after installation if the original download package is removed from the hard disk.
Display: 1024 × 768 or higher-resolution monitor; 1024 × 576 or higher for Excel 2010, OneNote 2010, Outlook 2010, PowerPoint 2010, and Word 2010
Operating system: Windows XP with SP3 (32-bit), Windows Vista with SP1 (32-bit or 64-bit), Windows Server 2003 R2 (32-bit or 64-bit) with MSXML 6.0 installed, Windows Server 2008 with SP2 (32-bit or 64-bit), Windows 7 (32-bit or 64-bit). Terminal Server and Windows on Windows (WOW) (which allows installing 32-bit versions of Office 2010 on 64-bit operating systems) are supported.
Additional: Requirements and product functionality can vary based on the system configuration and operating system. Use of graphics hardware acceleration requires DirectX 9.0c compatible graphics card with 64MB or higher video memory.

The most ambitious goal Microsoft is striving for with Office 2010 is making it available via a familiar experience across the PC, phone, and browser. Office 2010 is the first release of the productivity suite that will come in 32-bit and 64-bit flavors and on one DVD no less. In addition to the five editions of Office 2010 announced in July 2009 that are in Technical Preview, and the ad-supported one announced last month, Microsoft is also working on the Office Web Apps: Web versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote. As of September 2009 they were in the Technical Preview status but this week they moved into beta. Last month, rumors swirled around Office Mobile 7, the last piece of the Office puzzle we've heard the least about, being ready for Spring 2010.

Last month, Microsoft announced it would close down the Office 2010 Technical Preview Program to make room for the public beta. Earlier this week, Microsoft gave MSDN and TechNet subscribers to the above downloads, and now it is making them available to the public.

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Thursday, November 19, 2009

Public Betas for Office 2010, Project 2010, Visio 2010, and SharePoint Server 2010 Download

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