Office 2007 Beta 2 Technical Refresh Today

Thanks to slimy & nshahzad for posting this and many others who submitted this to our newsdesk.

Microsoft will release a Technical Refresh build (4407.1005) for Office 2007 Beta 2 today. The UI is at lockdown after about 1000 changes to the ribbon and a new silver scheme. Anything after this will be bug fixes.

B2TR is compatible with Windows Vista RC1 and comes in 5 languages: English, German, French, Spanish and Japanese. The Technical Refresh will be available for public download at a cost of $1.50. This fee is requested in order for Microsoft to be able to pay for bandwidth and shipping costs.

Jensen Harris has posted many performance and reliability improvements:

Improved Ribbon (nearly 1000 changes)
Top-left redesign of the programs (File Menu)
Double-click the office button to close the window
Silver color scheme
Redesign of the PowerPoint Home tab
Improvements to default styles for all objects (pictures, tables, charts, SmartArt, headers, footers, etc.)
New Icons for all the products
Usability improvements to the Office menu
Send button in the form in Outlook

Beta 2 customers are expected to receive the update free of charge. A web patch, that is meant to be installed over Beta 2, is expected to be released for these users. The full install can only be used if the current Beta 2 is uninstalled. Public launch of Vista and Office 2007 is expected in early 2007. Three final editions will be released: