One of the most important details about the upcoming Office 2010 release is that it will come in both 32-bit and 64-bit versions, helping pave the path towards an x64 computing future. However, people have been wondering if these versions will come separately, or if Microsoft will choose to include them in the same package. Ars Technica have unearthed some valuable details which hint that the latter could indeed be the case; Microsoft will most likely include both versions on the same DVD.
Ars Technica posted an error message that read the following: "If you want to install 64-bit Office 2010, you must uninstall all 32-bit Office products fist, and then run setup.exe in the x64 folder. If you want to install 32-bit Office 2010, close this setup. Then navigate to the x86 folder at the root of your CD/DVD and run setup.exe." As you can hopefully deduct from this, it is implied that both versions will be on the same DVD, and that itself implies that you should be able to use one serial number for each of the different versions.
This is good news, although it is speculated that this message was just included for development reasons, and that there is still a strong possibility that both editions will stay separate. We'll update this as soon as Microsoft makes an official announcement, so stay vigilant. We've included a screenshot of the error message below, again, courtesy of our friends over at Ars Technica.
