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Microsoft Corp.'s next version of its Office desktop programs will reach consumers next year, though not likely in conjunction with the Windows 7 operating system


Microsoft is set to announce Wednesday that Office 2010 will be finished and ready to send to manufacturers in the first half of next year.

From there, it can take six weeks to four months or more for the programs to reach PC users, said Chris Capossela, a senior vice president in the Microsoft group that makes Office. The timing will differ for big businesses and individual consumers, and for people who buy packaged software versus those who download it.

Some industry watchers had expected a new version of Office this year, but Microsoft Chief Executive Steve Ballmer extinguished that rumor at a meeting with analysts in February.

Capossela declined to be more specific about a launch date. Windows 7, the successor to Windows Vista is scheduled to reach consumers by the end of January 2010.

Office 2010 - previously known by the code name "Office 14" - will include slimmed-down versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote that let people create and edit documents in a Web browser. Consumers will have access to a free, ad-supported version, and Capossela said the company is still hammering out what to charge businesses that want a version without ads.

Microsoft plans to let hundreds of thousands of people test a technical preview of the new Office portfolio starting in the third quarter of 2009, Capossela said. The company did not say whether average PC users will have a chance to test a more polished beta version.

Microsoft also said a new version of its Exchange e-mail server will be available for purchase in the second half of 2009. When paired with the next version of Microsoft's Outlook e-mail program, Exchange 2010 aims to prevent e-mail faux pas and would warn people against trying to "reply all" to a huge distribution list. Microsoft said it can also be tweaked to stop people from sending e-mail outside the organization, helping businesses cut down on unnecessary e-mail and prevent leaks.

A beta version of Exchange 2010 was to be made available on Wednesday.

 Microsoft Corp is set to publicly launch Internet Explorer 8 early on Thursday, the latest version of its market-dominating web browser.

The application an integral part of Microsoft's eagerly awaited Windows 7 OS can be downloaded from Microsoft's Website from 9 a.m. Pacific time, free for people using licensed Microsoft operating
systems IE8, as it is commonly referred to, has been in public beta testing for about a year, but Thursday's launch marks its full public rollout. Microsoft, the world's largest software company, said IE8 will run with Windows Vista its latest operating system, and also Windows XP, the previous version which some users still prefer over Vista.

The application replaces IE7, which has a lock on the browser market. According to a recent survey by IT consultants Janco Associates Inc, Internet explorer has a 72.2 percent market share, ahead of the Mozilla Foundation's Firefox browser with 17.2 percent. Google Inc's new Chrome browser has only 2.8 percent of the market, while Apple Inc's Safari has less than 1 percent. Microsoft has run afoul of U.S. and European antitrust regulators for bundling its browser with its operating system, which competitors say is an attempt to drive them out of the market.

Last month, Google joined Mozilla and Norway's Opera in protesting Microsoft's dominance in the browser market. In January, European regulators brought formal charges against Microsoft for abusing its dominant market position by bundling its Internet Explorer Web browser with its Windows operating system, which is used in 95 percent of the world's personal computers. Microsoft has already announced that users of Windows 7 - expected later this year or early next year - will be able to turn key programs like Internet Explorer off, making it easier to use other browsers.

New features in IE8 include right-clicking on addresses or other web features to go straight to a map or put into a blog or other Website, which Microsoft calls an "accelerator". Users will also be able to put in keywords in the address bar to recall sites visited related to that word. The new browser also has enhanced security protection, for example warning users if they are about to download something from a site known to be a source of malicious software, or "malware".