About

Thank you to the thousands of passionate Windows enthusiasts who helped seed full (unaltered) builds of Microsoft Windows Vista to thousands of other Windows enthusiasts. You can still learn more about what’s new in Windows Vista in our recent interview with Jim Allchin.

Per the official report, Microsoft is currently recommending waiting for a DVD version of Windows Vista Beta 2 due to extremely long wait times for the download directly from Microsoft. For a few short days, we (Chris and Jake) were helping Microsoft by seeding an unaltered build of the x32 and x64 ISO files with MD5 checksums for verification. We published this information in Lockergnome.

It seems that both of us are now officially members of the prestigious “Cease and Desist Letter” club. We are not saddened by this turn of events, as it was wholly expected – and neither of us had ever received a “Cease and Desist Letter” before. We would much rather have received a printed form to print out and hang on our walls for
posterity, but the following email will have to suffice:

Our cooperation in this matter is a given; the tracker is dead. We were only trying to help Microsoft by doing this, assuming the costs and responsibilities associated with serving and seeding larger files. We did not alter, crack, hack, or patch any of Microsoft’s files – merely provided a mirror for them when Microsoft was worried that people might have problems with World Cup viewing, etc, due to the high demand of Windows Vista Beta 2. If the reprinting of your “Cease and Desist Letter” also infringes on Microsoft’s copyright, we will remove it as well.

As long-standing members of the Windows community, we would have much rather worked with Microsoft directly on this matter than to have circumvented established protocol. We have plenty of Windows Vista Feedback to share – and our feedback list gets longer by the day. We want to encourage all Microsoft Windows users to obtain the software through safe and trusted distribution channels.