Microsoft Offers Public Preview of Office 2016 for Windows PCs
Microsoft (MSFT) is showcasing a public preview of the next build of Office 2016 for Windows desktops, available as of Monday, May 4, to Office 365 subscribers and nonsubscribers, and both business and home users.
On its Office website, Microsoft posted information on how to download the latest build of the productivity suite.
“You should try the Office 2016 Preview if you: enjoy trying out software that’s still being developed and providing your insights and feedback; you know how to reinstall your previous version of Office; and you know your way around a PC and feel comfortable troubleshooting problems, backing up data, and uninstalling and installing the Office,” the post said.
Office 2016 is supposed to be commercially ready by this fall, and until then Microsoft will continue to update the public preview regularly, the company said. The suite works on PCs or Windows tablets running Windows 7 or higher. Users with Office 2013 already installed must uninstall it to load and use the new preview.
In early March, Microsoft rolled out a free preview version of Office 2016 for Apple’s (AAPL) Mac, downloadable from the vendor’s Office for Mac Preview web page.
Separately, at Microsoft’s Ignite confab for IT professionals going on this week in Chicago, the vendor followed through on its promise to make fixes and updates to Windows 10 available in a variety of ways, particularly to businesses by offering up “Windows Update for Business,” another leg of the Windows 10 update and service setup.
The idea is that IT professionals will be able to maintain control over the cadence and sequence of Windows 10 fixes and update process in a more efficient and less labor-intensive fashion.
“We have been working with IT professionals all over the world to design new capabilities in Windows Update, designed for end-user devices within businesses,” Microsoft OS boss Terry Myerson wrote in a blog post.
Windows Update for Business will provide:
- Distribution rings: IT can specify which devices go first in an update wave
- Maintenance windows: IT can specify the critical timeframes when updates should and should not occur
- Peer to peer delivery: IT can deploy to make delivery of updates to branch offices and remote sites with limited bandwidth more efficient
- Integration with System Center and Enterprise Mobility Suite: Allows these tools to continue to be single pane of glass for all of your systems management
“Windows Update for Business will reduce management costs, provide controls over update deployment, offer quicker access to security updates, and provide access to the latest innovation from Microsoft on an ongoing basis,” Myerson wrote.
Windows Update for Business will be offered free of charge for Windows Pro and Windows Enterprise devices.
“It’s part of our intelligent cloud–we will update and maintain Windows devices for you, while still giving you control,” he said.
