Exclusive: Microsoft codename

Windows Vista Beta 1. It’s been a long time coming – a distant mirage in the desert sands of time…

It really has felt like that since longhorn started out in alpha oh so many years ago.

Well the wait is finally over!One more night of pitching your tent, watering your camel, and you will wake to find that mirage is really an oasis just over the sanddune in front of you.

WinBeta is proud to exclusively reveal that tomorrow (Wednesday) Microsoft are expected to formally announce the availability of Beta 1 to it’s testers.

Build 5112 is expected to be announced as the build of choice to hold the Beta 1 badge of honour. Although rumors being what they are the fat lady has not sung yet, there is still the possibility of another build.

This will reveal to the world simultaneously the progress Microsoft has made in it’s successor to Windows XP as well as a first look glimpse at Internet Explorer 7.

Speculation is rife that Microsoft has pulled out all the stops to make this beta compatible with as much hardware as possible and has included a plethora of drivers. One suggestion was that 50%+ of the new build will be purely drivers. Given that minimal drivers exist in the 831MB build of 5048 from WinHec we would estimate the beta build has the possibility of being larger than 2GB in size. Certainly this is a huge increase in size compared to the previous publicly tested build, 5048 from Microsoft’s WinHec conference in April.

Last Friday Microsoft announced that Windows codename ‘Longhorn’ will officially be called Windows Vista. This announcement has been made too late to allow the artwork in Beta 1 to be updated so we expect it will retain it’s ‘Longhorn" moniker for now.

As in previous betas, artwork is considered a low priority update and as such we may see the Longhorn name on builds for quite some months yet. The only acknowledgement of Windows Vista evident in the build is rumoured to be by way of the desktop build number. It will likely say that it is Windows Vista Beta 1, yet all other areas of the Operating System will refer to ‘Longhorn’.

We have also had unconfirmed reports that there will be waves of 15,000 testers who will get access to the new build every day. There are currently 100,000 beta testers that have already been advised by Microsoft of their inclusion in the beta program. Beta testers will get access to the download in waves to allow access without crushing download servers.

All the beta 1 invitations have already been sent out. If you have not received one, then you may be invited in one of the subsequent waves of testers to be added. Don’t give up hope of being added just yet…1,000 invites a week will be emailed out during the course of Beta 1.

Beta testers will have access to the build within an hour of the official announcement tomorrow and WinBeta learned that MSDN subscribers can also expect access to the build, albeit in approximately 1 week’s time around August 3rd.

It’s been a long road to get to Beta 1 over the last 4 years but we have reached this oasis at last – we look forward to the beta program and the next two years of testing and sharing our findings and news with you and you with us…

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Source: WinBeta