I'm doing it because I hope to end up with a legal retail version by using the beta until the launch. I certainly wouldn't pay for any MS product, but this helps me avoid paying for another Windows license in the long run. And if it doesn't happen that way, I haven't lost anything.

As it is, the beta is apparently better than Vista was, probably because theere aren't any major new features.

The main features are the taskbar (Lol Mac clone), HomeGroup (totally incompatible with other Windows versions and OSs so worthless), some new window minimising shortcuts (that's a feature?), IE8 (Who cares, FF is better and IE8 combines the bad of IE7 with lots of bugs, such as major websites failing to work), and DX11 (Which you need hardware from late 2009 for).

Is WinFS fully deployed in the Beta?

No, and never will be. WinFS was too ambitious and was dropped in mid-Vista development. Instead, small sections of it have been implemented in Vista and now 7. But nothing like the promised features. Looks like NTFS will stay.

So is it over? They were only giving out 2.5 million and they're saying that Microsoft had a server meltdown from the amount of peoiple trying to get Windows 7. Was the download already made available?

^^^ No. 3 PM EST/12 PM PST from what I read.

So thers still time excellent, also I have another question is it true that you have to have Vista if you want to upgrade to 7, and you can't do that if you have XP? I have two harddrives on my computer and one of them has nothing in it so could I put windows 7 on that one and have my other one (XP) on the drive its on now.

I read that, not sure tho. Something about requiring vista service pack 1

It's now live, and nearly impossible to download I've been trying for 10 mins and it keeps saying the server is busy, here's the link:

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/evalcenter/dd353205.aspx

Yah I know one guy managed to get it. It looks like BitTorrent is the way to get it if you want it.