Yes! Finally a decent BETA where they will take my bug reports seriously!

A snip of the email!

Hello , Thank you for completing our nomination survey sometime within the past several weeks, and letting us know about your interest in participating in the Microsoft® Office "12" Technical Beta program. We are pleased to announce that your request for participation in the Office "12" Technical Beta has been approved. You will be provided with access to the Office "12" Beta software, documentation, and support within the next 2-3 weeks. But we wanted to let you know now that you have been accepted, so that you can make any preparations that you need (Technical Beta system requirements are found below).

Our goal for the Technical Beta is to have a well targeted group of testers who are willing to actively participate and provide useful feedback to our development team. Regular and consistent participation throughout the program is expected. As an approved Technical Beta tester, we ask that you do the following: * Download Office "12" software and related information * Participate in private beta newsgroups * Submit bug reports online * Complete periodic surveys to share your input on various technical issues * Observe the non-disclosure terms of participation

Oh thats so cool! One step closer to Windows Vista, It has'nt apeared in MS Connect site yet though so i'll just wait, jus getting my machine setup ready for the BETA, Gotta get a nice clean install of XP install and a decent test scenerio.

My machine is upto spec also

*** SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS ***

Below are the system requirements for the Microsoft® Office "12" Beta-1 software. NOTE: We have provided these minimum hardware recommendations here as guidance for deploying Beta-1, but as with any Technical Beta, they do not necessarily represent final Office "12" hardware requirements.

CLIENT

• Operating System: Windows XP SP1 or Windows 2003 (RTM or higher) required
• Processor: Pentium 512 MHz or higher * RAM: 256 MB minimum
• HD: Varies depending on installation choices
• Resolution: 800 x 600 or higher

SERVER

• Operating System: Windows Server 2003 SP1

Single box installation:

• Processor: 2.5 GHz
• RAM: 2 GB recommended, 1 GB minimum
• HD: Scenario dependent

Farm Deployment:

• Web server – Processor: 2.5 GHz; RAM – 2 GB
• App server – Processor: Dual proc – 2.5 GHz; RAM – 2 GB
• SQL – Processor: Dual proc – 2.5 GHz; RAM – 2 GB

Not too sure if I could test it on my server enviroment but we will see

Updates to coming when avalible

- Tom

Posted by Tom Parker / Boring and Computers