Vista (beta 2) is available for the public from Microsoft

[GoPodular.com]

Just a heads up to the developers out there.  I saw this on ZDNet & jumped on the bandwagon.

You can start the 50-page, 4-day paperwork process HERE.  It'll take a *few* hours to d/l it.  It's just over 3 Gb, and the servers are grunting under the load.

[nipsmg]

I've had the DVD from MSDN for week or do, I *MIGHT* dual boot this on my laptop for development purposes, maybe.

note:  This beta is not ready for daily desktop use, there are still too many performance issues and bugs to run it daily.  Unless you're a developer looking to write some stuff to take advantage of vista features (WinFX, etc), or have run Beta OS's before and know what to expect, don't expect too much.

--NipsMG

[Havok]

I second it's not ready to replace XP yet - I've been messing with it for a week or so, and there are definitely some things that aren't there yet.

[ahofle]

Seems like another excuse to make you buy new hardware to me. 

http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9000829

[squirrellydw]

Great more bloat.  I think win2000 was there best OS, not for games but everythng else.

[TOK]

Don't waste your time. In its current state, it takes about as long to boot as it does to fill out the paperwork to get it.

It took just under 4 minutes to get to the desktop on the 2ghz AMD I tested it on. That same machine boots XP in just over 2 minutes. The Beta I tried didn't have the much ballyhooed 3D interface implemented yet, either.

[tore-]

Who would want to run a beta version anyway? Developers, thats who.

I just hope that they have fixed the tcp/ip stack, its a mess in current state.