Office 2010 already leaked
Pirated copies of Microsoft Office 2010 appeared online over the weekend. It’s billed as a leak from a legitimate testing scheme, though that may be a scam by the pirates.
Officially Microsoft will be releasing a ‘Technical Edition’ of the package in July for expert testing. Access will be by invitation only, though the firm has noted that this could cover “hundreds of thousands of users” and is already taking applications.
During the weekend, what purported to be the Technical Edition appeared on filesharing Web sites. ComputerWorld quotes one downloader from Mininova (which appears to have removed the files in question) as saying, “I’ve tried both Word and Excel, which offer some additional functions and a nicer interface.”
This does appear to be a genuine (so to speak) copy of Office 2010. However, it’s not currently clear if the leaked package is indeed the edition which will be released in July, or if it’s simply a work-in-progress copy which has been renamed by the pirates for the sake of credibility. Installation screens in the package do use the phrase ‘Technical Edition’.
ZDNet’s Australian site has extensive screenshots from the leaked package, perhaps the most interesting of which are those dealing with the online versions of the various applications. That’s part of Microsoft’s attempts to combat the challenge of cloud-based office software such as Google Docs.
There have been suspicions in the past that Microsoft has ‘allowed’ software to leak out early as a way of drumming up publicity. However, those who’ve downloaded the leaked copy of Office 2010 note it is set to expire in November 2010. Were Microsoft behind the leak, it would likely have set the software to stop working at or before the time the final version went on sale, which in this case is likely the first half of next year.
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August 22nd, 2009
thanks a lot
very nice
thanks again