Microsoft Office 2010 Beta Leaks on Peer-to-Peer Network

Microsoft is expected to release the public beta of Office 2010 in the next few weeks, but you won’t have to wait any longer to try it out. Just like last time’s technical preview, Office 2010’s public beta has leaked on file-sharing torrent network.

A quick search on Mininova will reveal both 64-bit and 32-bit versions of Office 2010. Both x64 and x86 versions of Office 2010 have healthy seeders, and have been download 4,960 and 2,523 times respectively at the time of writing this post.

This is actually the first time Microsoft is releasing Office in both x86 and x64 flavors. This build of Office 2010 is numbered 14.0.4514.1009 and asks for activation key, as per Neowin. Check out some of the screenshots posted by CravingTech.com:

If you have tried the previous technical preview of Office 2010, you’ll immediately notice that the UI has been tuned a little. The icons for programs like Word, Excel and Powerpoint have also been facelifted.

Some users on Mininova commented that Office 2010 requires activation key to be used for more than 30 days, but other users have been able to find the workaround and activate it without any glitches. Microsoft’s Professional Developers Conference (PDC) will be held at Los Angeles tomorrow, and I expect them to use this opportunity to release the beta to public and distribute free activation keys for the same, just like they did for Windows 7. Did you try Office 2010 beta? Tell us what you think…