Microsoft will/won't provide a public beta for Office 2010

Over the past couple of days, Microsoft has indicated that they will and will not be providing a public beta for the upcoming Office 2010 suite. Is this an example of a misinformed public relations person at Microsoft spouting misinformation, an example of the left hand not knowing what the right hand is doing, another backtrack on Microsoft's part, or just a simple mistake?

Regardless of why the initial information indicating that there would be no public beta for Office 14 was retracted with the news that Microsoft will, in fact, follow a similar development cycle as was used with Office 2007, I think Microsoft has made the right decision by including a public beta in the cycle. While the initial Technology Preview, which will be by invite-only, will include thousands of testers, those testers tend to be hard core technologists. Although the public beta is not likely to draw technophobes into the mix, it will greatly expand the opportunity that Microsoft has to receive feedback from a much wider array of testers at more levels of the technology spectrum.

Read the whole article here.

-Ken