Free Windows Vista Ultimate for Technical Beta Testers

Just got an e-mail from Microsoft. Unlike the Office team, the Vista group decided to reward any tester who submitted at least ONE bug. I know that there are a lot of testers out there that used only the Windows Error Reporting tool to submit data back to Microsoft, but in this case, you had to have used the actual Microsoft Beta tool to submit bug data. Even if the bug was a duplicate, you qualify.

You can download the RTM bits as an .ISO formatted DVD from Microsoft Connect. You cannot generate a product key ... Microsoft will e-mail out keys to anyone that accepts the offer. You have 30 days before you need to activate, and you don't need the key to install.

Unlike the XP beta, it appears that this is a SINGLE license, as opposed to the five licenses granted for the XP beta. Also, Microsoft will not be mailing out any product ... it is a downloadable only.

My sincerest thanks go out to the Vista team for this decision, and hopefully the Office team will follow that example (although it's doubtful).