Microsoft Office 2007 SP1 beta surfaces

Yesterday, the folks in Redmond released a clandestine beta of Office 2007 SP1 to a select group of testers. At this point, the beta appears to be available only to members of the Office 2007 Technology Adoption Program (TAP)--whether the beta will be made public, remains unclear. "We have a long history of securing feedback around future technologies from customer and partners," a Microsoft spokeswoman told ZDnet. "We have invited a very small number of customers and partners to participate in early testing of future products. We have nothing new to share around timing of future releases." While the features that the beta provides remain unknown at this point, expect the service pack to be fully analyzed as soon as it falls into the hands of hackers and Microsoft fanboys. When asked, the company declined to provide a target release date for the service pack, though given the timing of this beta, I wouldn't be too surprised to see it by year's end.

For more on Office 2007 SP1:
- see this ZDnet story