Microsoft Corp. may launch the public beta of Office 2010 as early as next week, according to e-mail messages received Tuesday by people who have been testing the company's next application suite.
Last month, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer promised that his company would roll out a beta in November. Microsoft has said it will distribute millions of copies of the Office 2010 public beta.
Microsoft launched an invitation-only Technical Preview of Office 2010 in July and used its new Click-to-Run technology to deliver that build to testers. Click-to-Run "streams" pieces of a suite to users who begin a download, letting them start using the suite within minutes. While users work with the suite, the remainder of the code is downloaded in the background.