Up to now I’ve been using beta releases and evaluation copies for all of my test and lab work. That’s about to change. Products only stay in beta for so long. Evals are fine but they timebomb. Microsoft TechNet gives you a range of products where you can get a very wide range of the Microsoft products for testing and evaluation purpose, without the timebomb! The products are not meant to be used for production systems. Also in the package is a lot of documentation and beta products.
I’ve just subscribed to TechNet Direct, a single user subscription that allows me to download whatever I want. I’ve had CD subscriptions at workplaces before and I used to fear those CD packages coming in. Not any longer. I can download ISO images and burn them as I require them … or seeing as I use virtualisation I’ll just mount them in my VM’s … you gotta love virtualisation!
A big perk will be early access to RTM products. Vista and Office 2007 are both supposed to be available for download within 7 days of RTM and that was just this week.