Windows Home Server previewed

Once again, I spoke with Microsoft product manager Todd Hedrick, who told me that the 'C' in CTP alternatively stood for consumer, customer, and community. "We think of it as the 'C-cubed' build," he said, noting that they had staged the release of the CTP so that first-tier testers such as MVPs, Microsoft Insiders, and Microsoft employees could give them a few days to triage the build before it shipped to the wider test pool. "Any one of them could tell us there's a showstopper [in the CTP build] and we'd stop the whole thing," he said. "It's a sanity check."

Regarding the public beta, over 45,000 people were accepted into the program previous to the CTP release, and Hendrick says there are another 10,000 to 12,000 waiting in the queue. Those testers will be brought on board for the CTP, he said, though it was unclear whether Microsoft would continue accepting new testers after that point.

The CTP represents a visual freeze of the product: "What you see is what it will look like [when it's finalized]," Headrick told me. WHS is "98 percent" feature complete, he said, and only a few minor changes will be made between now and the final version.