Put the Pedal to the Metal: Take the 2007 Microsoft Office System Out for a Spin

Put the Pedal to the Metal: Take the 2007 Microsoft Office System Out for a Spin "With the online test-drive, people can experience products directly for themselves to learn how the next release can help them better manage documents, organize their work and collaborate with others. In just minutes, anyone with access to an Internet connection can try out the latest improvements to familiar Microsoft Office applications using sample data to demo editing documents, sending e-mail, and posting to Microsoft Office SharePoint® sites to illustrate real-time collaboration functionality. The system is set up not only with Microsoft Office client applications, but also with server offerings pre-populated with data to allow people to easily experience the new server functionality in Microsoft Office. This is the first online test-drive made available before the launch of a Microsoft Office release, and it features 18 product-specific tutorials with step-by-step instructions covering most Office system client products and servers, including Office SharePoint Server 2007 and Office Project Server 2007."

Interesting milestone -- reach client exploration of Microsoft's next-generation rich client apps.

It uses the Citrix browser plug-in, and is apparently quite popular (and/or built with insufficient resources); at the moment, it indicates "The Test Drive system is busy with an estimated wait time of 188 minutes."

7:45 a.m. Eastern update: got in after ~5 minutes; in addition to the Citrix client, you'll also need a Windows Live ID (formerly known as Passport id). I couldn't get it to work, but maybe that's because I'm using IE7 beta 2. Also, unsurprisingly:
"The Test Drive System supports the following:
* Windows 98, 2000 and XP
* Internet Explorer 5.5 and later"

Update 2: crashed and restarted IE7, tried again; I'm in. Unclear how test-drivers are supposed to test Outlook without an id/pw, but maybe I missed some help text...