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In a recent announcement, Microsoft has offered us a little tease. It seems the first public beta of Microsoft Office 2010 will be available in November 2009. We don’t know exactly when in November, just that November is the month. We also don’t know if they’ll be charging for this beta as they did late in the Office 2007 beta release.

For the last few months, some in the industry have been testing Office 2010 (me included) under a special limited-release technical preview. I’m really looking forward to the public beta. In my time spent using the technical preview, I have to say I like it. However, since I was very familiar with Office 2007, making my upgrade to 2010 was fairly seamless for me. I mean, there were a few new things to learn about, but for the most part, Office 2010 looks and feels like Office 2007.

The buzz in the industry is that many users will be upgrading straight from the 2003 version to 2010 (much like many are making the jump from Windows XP to Windows 7, skipping Vista altogether). This leap presents a much larger knowledge gap as Office 2003 users haven’t had time yet to become accustomed to the new GUI of Office products, like the Ribbon.

Such an upgrade presents a challenge to companies who now have to consider employee training in addition to hardware and software resources to handle these new products.

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