Downloader: Microsoft pushes Office 2010 release candidate to testers

Wednesday, February 24, 2010

Microsoft pushes Office 2010 release candidate to testers

With the full RTM due in June, Microsoft has confirmed that a release candidate build of Office 2010 is currently in the hands of testers.

This isn't news to the crew at Wzor.net, of course, who have made a habit of putting leaked RC, beta, and RTM software from Microsoft on display for all to see. They've confirmed that Microsoft is already internally testing an RTM escrow build of Office 2010.

As a Microsoft spokesperson told NeoWin, "Microsoft made a release candidate available to members in the Technology Adoption Program (TAP). This is one of Microsoft's planned milestones in the engineering process; however they do not have plans to make this new code set available broadly."

Fortunately for eager testers, Microsoft's own distribution plans won't hold you back. Leaked RC builds are circulating on various torrent sites (and other P2P networks like eMule), so you can still find a copy to test if you're OK with the associated risks.

We wouldn't advise that, of course.