Woody's OFFICE Watch is claming to have the Office 11 timetable
It's official. Microsoft plans on releasing the "Preview Beta" of Office 11 between September and November, 2002. It will follow up with a "Broad Reach Beta" between January and March of next year.
There's a lot of obfuscating terminology floating around here, so let me try to translate.
The "Preview Beta" is only the test version of Office 11 that matters. If you're involved in the "Preview Beta" and you discover a significant bug, chances are good that Microsoft will fix the bug before the next version of Office ships. The "Preview Beta" doesn't go out until well after everything important is frozen: in very rare cases, "Preview Beta" participants might be able to post a comment such as, "Hey, why don't you add a button to this dialog box", and if enough people jump on the bandwagon the button might be added. But there's no way that a dead-on insightful comment such as, "Jeeez, Revision Tracking sucks, start all over again, folks" will even be acknowledged.
The "Broad Reach Beta" is what we used to call the "Marketing Beta". It's really a marketing thang - Microsoft releases a "Beta" version of Office so key customers will feel that they're on the inside. In fact, once the Marketing Beta hits, only show-stopper bugs (that is, bugs that cause Office to hang, or result in lost data) are even considered. It's the "Feel Good Beta" version.
News source: Woody's Watch
