Microsoft is promising a final version of Office 12 for the second half of next year, around the same time as the company releases the Vista upgrade to its Windows operating system.
Microsoft had said it would release a test version this month and last week sent notices to those testers it had accepted for the program. Beta 1 offers new versions of the standard Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook applications. They come along with updates to several less-well-known members of the Office family, including its Access database, OneNote note-taking program, Publisher layout software and the Groove Virtual Office collaboration suite.
The Office upgrade is important for Microsoft, which gets much of its profits from the combined sales of Office and Windows, even as it has diversified into many other business and consumer products.
So far with Office 12, Microsoft has showed off a revamp of the user interface and talked about other broad areas of improvement. But the company has not released a full set of new features or said how it will price and package up the new software.
At a financial analyst meeting in July, CEO Steve Ballmer did say there would be a "premium" version of Office, but the company has not elaborated on its plans there. The company has also pledged there will be some new server-based capabilities for Office, but has not given complete details.
Yawn, who cares?
Same buggy, overpriced bloatware as always.