Windows watcher Paul Thurrott has confirmed that Microsoft plans to release Office 2010 on June 15 2010.

Microsoft Announces Office 2011 ... For the Mac
Not that many of you care, per se, but the Macworld trade show is happening as I write this. And unlike in previous years, Apple isn't even attending the show, so it's generating a lot less buzz and—perhaps more important—fewer attendees, which could spell the end of a decades-long tradition. But there are companies trying to take up the slack and, go figure, Microsoft is among them. The company announced its plans for Office 2011 for the Mac, which it says will ship by the end of 2010. (Office 2010 for Windows, meanwhile, will become generally available June 15, 2010.) As previously announced, Office 2011 will include a version of Outlook, replacing the horrible Entourage email/PIM application that has dogged Mac Office for years. But there was some new information this week: Office 2011 will feature a Mac-like take on the hugely successful ribbon UI that Microsoft first pioneered in Office 2007 on Windows. That's neat, and it's about time. Despite wishful thinking from the Mac fanbase, Office for Mac has always been like a sad, second-rate copy of the Windows version. Maybe this time, Microsoft will get it right.

Windows 8: It Won't Be Called Windows 8, for Starters. But All New? Please.
A Microsoft employee briefly blogged about the next Windows release—Windows 8—recently, although the software giant quickly pulled the post. There were some interesting tidbits. First, Microsoft isn't referring to the next Windows version as Windows 8; instead, the OS is currently going by a very common Microsoft moniker, Windows Next. ("Next" or sometimes "v.Next" is often used to simply ID a product as the next version.) This is an important distinction because, as I've noted before, Microsoft isn't doing major and minor Windows versions anymore. So Windows 8 (or whatever it will be called) will simply be the next version of Windows. The post also made a bizarre claim. "The next version will be something completely different from what folks usually expect of Windows," it reads. This pronouncement has set off a bizarre series of speculative blog posts from people who simply don't understand Microsoft. No, Windows 8 won't be a cloud OS or something silly like that. It will simply be the next Windows. What I'd like to see—and this is something that matches nicely to the "completely different" note above while not actually changing the core of what Windows is—is a pervasive use of virtualization technologies to run legacy (i.e., pre-Windows 8) applications while offering a clean break to create a system that is, in many ways, brand new and not technically bound to the past. Hey, we're all speculating here, so what the heck.