I downloaded Office 2010 Beta and thought I would be both cautious and clever by installing the 32 bit edition – but it wasn’t to be. Primarily I chose this option so that I could roll back easily if it was not ready for primetime. All would have been OK, except that the installer required the removal of Outlook 2007, so my plan was foiled. Installation was reasonably fast, and I began by starting up Outlook and it crashed on every second email. I was starting to regret testing beta software on my primary machine.
So I decided to go for broke and install the x64 edition (as I am running Windows 7 x64) and I am really happy with it. The downside of installing the x64 edition was the removal of all previous 32 bit editions of Office, so there is no easy rollback.
With some more use, I was pleasantly surprised. Everything is stable, and the applications work as expected. I immediately noticed how much faster Outlook was to load and be ready to work. I can’t say I have found any new killer features, just incremental improvements, for example, a better scheduling display when searching diaries to make a meeting.
If you want to find out more, have a look at the beta site which includes links to get the public preview.