Get Office 2000 Beta 2 for $20

Microsoft Corporation announced this week the release of Office 2000 Beta2 to over 700,000 testers. This makes Office 2000 larger than all previousOffice betas combined (Office 97 had 70,000 testers, for example). Office2000 Beta 2 will be made available to corporations and end-users throughthe Office evaluation program, which is now split into the Corporate Preview Program and the Consumer Preview Program.

"Customers have told us that they want Web functionality right inside Office," said Steven Sinofsky, general manager of Microsoft Office. "Office2000 lets customers use the Web as part of their everyday work by saving files in HTML, posting them to Web sites, and commenting on documents fromco-workers. The broad availability of beta 2 will allow users all over the world to get an early start in building workgroup webs."

If you're interested in receiving Office 2000 Beta 2 on CD, you can orderit beginning November 16th for about $20 from the Microsoft Web site. The versionthey're distributing is the Office 2000 Premium edition, which includesWord 2000, Microsoft Excel 2000, Outlook 2000, PowerPoint 2000, Access 2000, Publisher 2000, FrontPage 2000, PhotoDraw 2000, and Microsoft OfficeSmall Business Tools.

Office 2000 is will be released to manufacturing in the first quarter of 1999 and become available to customers in the second quarter of 1999