SharePoint 2010 public beta now available

Microsoft now has released the beta of many (if not all) of the elements of SharePoint 2010 for testing. Don't be surprised that it's labeled 'Beta 2': This is the first public beta, although Beat 1 was available to select corporations and Microsoft MVP partners.

The release includes SharePoint, the 2010 version of Search Server, and most interestingly to us, the new release of FAST ESP in SharePoint. This latter beta includes what we believe is a full re-write of FAST ESP 5.3 to integrate it into SharePoint 2010, with a huge number of usability, management, and feature capabilities. Stay tuned for more on these differences and enhancements over the coming months.

Jie Li's GeekWorld site links to the Microsoft public download pages; but if your company are Microsoft partners (MSPP) you'll find the downloads with other Microsoft code you can access.

You'll also find tips to getting everything working right on Jie Li's site as well as on Alex's SharePoint blog, where you'll find  a pretty darned complete list of what 'gotchas' you should know about.