Looking forward to Office 2010

I have recently joined the waiting list for the Office 2010 Technical Preview Programme which is currently invitation only. Trying to gain official information regarding new product launches is always a problem, more so for a small business with a limited user base. However, being prepared for the onslaught of new applications next year is high on my agenda as it is likely to drive a major technology refresh in our organisation.

I have watched the various clips on Office 2010 "The Movie" (www.office2010themovie.com) which have offered some taster glimpses into the new product offering, but I could really do with a little more meat on the bones, especially any impact in a terminal services environment. There is very little information on TechNet either - which is usually a good place to start.

We have a few users running Office 2007 and Office 2003 but the bulk of our users are still on Office 2000, so this could be a good opportunity to move everyone onto the same platform. Of course, we will probably also have to update the technical infrastructure at the same time so any heads-up for planning would be useful. A number of users are chomping at the bit for Google Docs for remote collaboration so I am particularly keen to learn more about the web-based applications associated with Office 2010 - for consistency and collaboration (co-authoring and live sharing). I also wonder how they are managed - Active Directory integration perhaps?

The products SharePoint Workspace 2010 (renamed from Groove 2007) and Backstage sounds interesting as they look like they might offer a way of storing and searching user files - something which, in our organisation, is largely still driven by simple drive mappings.

The new data visualisation tools in Excel 2010 also sound pretty exciting, I have been talking a lot recently about dashboards and widgets for KPI and business metrics, however these tools can often be cost prohibitive - I wonder if this new functionality in Excel 2010 could offer a solution to this problem?

There are a number of details emerging on the Office 2010 web site (www.microsoft.com/office/2010/) which I am keeping up with regularly but it doesn't beat being able to see the product.

Has anyone seen it/evaluated any part of Office 2010 - what are your thoughts so far?