Thanks to esc for originally informing us of this news ...
After skipping over a January CTP (Community Technology Preview) for Windows Vista, this afternoon Microsoft released the long-anticipated February CTP to its Microsoft Connect beta testers and, in the coming days, it will also be available to its MSDN subscribers.
The February CTP is based on build 5308 and includes the full Windows Vista feature set as the product is now feature complete. Upgrades from Windows XP SP2 are now also enabled, but there's no support for upgrading from previous Vista builds.
However, Microsoft warned that this build is NOT beta quality, but is being provided as a preview of our progress towards Beta 2.
Despite that, Microsoft is still touting this release as an "Enterprise CTP", urging large corporate customers to begin testing it in controlled environments.
They say that the following CTP will be more oriented toward typical consumer users and will conclude the Beta 2 release cycle. For this consumer CTP release, Microsoft hasn't announced a date more specific than the second quarter, but presumably it will be in April.
News source:
ieXbeta
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