I’ve read reports from two Microsoft bloggers (Maria Johansson from the Asia Pacific region and Daniel Melanchthon from Germany) that TechNet and MSDN subscribers can download the final released copies of Office 2007 and Windows Vista, complete with product keys, this week. The official dates are today, November 12, for Office 2007, and Friday, November 17, for Vista.
In fact, Maria’s post says that Office 2007 should be available for download, but I’m not seeing it when I log on to my TechNet Plus account.
(… Update 2:30PM Pacific: It’s there now.)
Of course, the RTM bits for both products are already circulating around various BitTorrent networks, with reports of one crack that exploits a weakness in the beta activation code that should be blocked within a matter of days. And so the arms race officially begins.
Ed Bott 
I’m running Vista RC2 and Office 2007 Beta 2 TR, and sure don’t want to wait until February to get the release versions of these products. Do both of those products come with the $350 TechNet Direct subscription? Is there some reason I shouldn’t order that up right now instead of waiting to buy them on CD next year?
Correction – Vista RC1
Yes, both products come with the TechNet Direct subscription. It’s really a smokin’ deal.
For some common issues with installing the RTM build of Office (mainly if any beta version has been installed before) and the manual removal steps for the Office beta, see http://pschmid.net/blog/2006/11/13/80
My RTM copy arrived today. I had my beta installed in a VM, but I’m still hesitating a bit on installing it on my main machine without making a full system backup.