Office Professional 2003 Beta 2

Perhaps to assuage the clamouring public, or to work out some development kinks, Microsoft has released a public beta of its popular office suite. Our initial assessment? As in Office XP, the suite's most prominent changes target the professional market. True, Microsoft has enhanced some of Office 2003's applications, adding small improvements such as Outlook's better email handling and spam filtering. But most of Office 2003’s enhancements benefit large-scale setups. Corporate intranets will get a lot out of the suite's new XML integration, which facilitates moving information from one program to another, and its beefed-up collaboration features. Corporate buyers may want to give this beta a run. But, if nothing much changes with the final release, consumers won't find much reason to upgrade.