Microsoft Office 2010 this week hit the Release Candidate milestone, signaling that the product is nearly ready for prime time.
Interestingly, unlike the public beta release (which was downloaded over 2 million times), this release candidate is not available for just anyone's consumption.
"Microsoft made a release candidate available to members in the technology adoption program (TAP)," a Microsoft representative told Cnet. "This is one of Microsoft's planned milestones in the engineering process; however (we) do not have plans to make this new code set available broadly."
Microsoft said that it benefited greatly from the wide-range of public testing it had for Windows 7 through its multiple beta and release candidate phases, so it's a little strange that the company isn't adopting the same strategy for its premier productivity suite.
Microsoft Office 2010 is slated for release in June.