Microsoft Office 10 due out this year

'Office 10' is expected to go beta around June this year, and is expected on the shelves by the end of the year. Sources say the revamped package is expected to use Exchange 2000 as it's back-end, and will better accommodate workgroup and collaborative applications. It will also use the Lernout & Hauspie speech technology to provide full voice control of all Office functions, such as Open, Save and for reading emails. As part of this push to take speech from a novelty to a serious tool, the new Speech API (SAPI 5.0) will be released in around 6 months. As expected, XML will play a greater role, and will be fully utilised by SAPI 5.0 See http://www.cnn.com/2000/TECH/computing/02/29/ms.office.overhaul.idg/index.html for the story.