Microsoft has released a wave of preview versions of its upcoming Office 2013 office productivity software and services, with the first public preview released on July 16. Ars continues to dig into the previews, looking at each aspect of the platform’s client software and cloud services—including the apps for the Office add-in developer framework. So far, here’s what we know, and a round-up of our in-depth reviews:

Office as a service

While Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer said that Office 2013 would be offered as a traditional “perpetual license” product, he also said that the next version of Office has been “built from the get-go as a service” and tied to the Office 365 cloud platform, both for consumers and business. Rather than putting the suite’s applications themselves in the cloud, Microsoft is using its App-V application streaming technology and a “Click2Go” installer to deploy functionality down to the desktop.