I am writing this in Microsoft Word, hardly an unusual way to author a document. But I'm not using Word as you know it—part of the large, complex Microsoft Office suite installed on your computer's hard drive. Instead, I am using a new, streamlined version of Word that for the first time resides on remote servers you reach through the Internet.

Microsoft has made the release candidate (RC) for its Office 2010 productivity suite available to a select few in its tech adoption program, the company confirmed Wednesday.

"Microsoft made a release candidate available to members in the technology adoption program (TAP)," a spokesman said. "This is one of Microsoft's planned milestones in the engineering process; however they do not have plans to make this new code set available broadly."

Office 2010 was made available to the public last November at the company's Professional Developers Conference (PDC).

Microsoft is looking forward to strong sales of Office 2010 when the productivity suite ships later this year, based on what the company called "record interest" in the beta version of the product. Users have downloaded more than 2 million trial copies of the software in just seven weeks, according to Microsoft Office general manager Rachel Bondi.

"The Office 2010 beta is generating record interest and use, surpassing the previous Office 2007 beta download rate," said Bondi, in a blog post Tuesday. "It's a rate of 40,000 downloads per day," said Bondi.

Earlier this week, Office 2010 Beta was made available to MSDN and TechNet Subscribers and without wasting the time, Microsoft has done same for general public. Office 2010 public beta is available now at Microsoft Download Center.