Microsoft announced earlier this year that MS Office 2010 will officially be released in the first quarter of 2010. Originally planned for a 2009 release, probably along with the Windows 7 launch, Microsoft was unable to meet its own deadline and had to further push the release to after the launch of Windows 7. Microsoft Office 2010 (codename Office 14) will be the successor of Office 2007 with more of a “role based” approach to the program. Office 2007 had the codename Office 12, which would raise questions as to why the new revision was not codenamed Office 13. Well, looks like Microsoft is also superstitious, as the reason for skipping 13 is…simply bad luck. A new addition to this release will be “Office Web” which will consist of online versions of Microsoft Word, PowerPoint, Excel and OneNote. Yes, this means free Office for everyone online, including Linux and iPhone users, but Office Web will be ad-supported. To elaborate on the role based approach, it basically means that Microsoft has created features for specific roles such as Human Resources, Salespersons and Research Professionals.

The new versions of Microsoft Office Visio, Outlook, OneNote,  Office Project, and Publisher will have ribbons, which is like the toolbar combined with the tab bar as seen in some of the Office 2007 programs. MS Office 2010 will also  implement the ISO compliant version of Open XML.  Another new for Office 14 will be the distribution of 32bit and 64bit versions, all previous releases including Office 2007 have only been shipped in 32bit. This allows for Office to take advantage of more RAM via the 64bit processor’s ability, this means access more word docs and excel files and working with them all at once without speed and performance issues. Office 14 will be fully Windows 7 compatible with Jump Lists for each program from the taskbar, allowing you to open a fresh Word document or a previously saved doc from the taskbar without actually starting the program and then opening it from there.

With the official release being in the first quarter of 2010, official beta testing has not been initialized yet. Microsoft has announced that a 30 day expiration-equipped technical preview will be available in mid-July and users can sign up and register for it at http://www.office2010themovie.com/. But Bittorent, being the king of all things leak-able, has been hosting the leak of the technical preview since May 15, 2009. By now it should be clear to any company, including Microsoft, that if you speak of a beta or pre-release of some sort, it will most likely be on the net before you plan to make it available. The actual released date or price has been announced by Microsoft yet.