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Chris Pratley on anticiating the beta release of Office 12.

It's a funny time of year. We're approaching our first beta of Office12 and OneNote12 in the next few months (no news here - just standard procedure). My mind is all full of this new release of software, but I am not able to speak about it publicly. That makes it pretty hard to blog on our current products since to me they are nearly prehistoric. They are of course still as great as they were when we shipped them, but now my head is filled with what is to come and I am bursting to talk about it with all the people who have been asking for updates and features and fixes to our current release.
So I thought I would share some of the pain with you all. I will tease you with the fact that I know what we are doing, and it rocks, and you won’t be able to know until later on. Nyah. OK, done. Now your expectations are sky-high and we'll never be able to meet them.
Last week we hosted a big event for a few hundred customers and partners to show them Office12 and get feedback on our plans and designs. Of course I can't talk about that event either, but a few attendees blogged a little about it despite their NDAs (non-disclosure agreements). They didn't say all that much in the blog posts, except to agree with us that Office12 will indeed rock. I heard lots of comments like "revolutionary", "amazing", "definitely interesting business value", and even "Office has finally caught up with the rest of the company" (ouch!).

# posted by Rob Bushway @ 8:25 AM