According to a news conference with Microsoft and the Featured Community websites, Windows Vista Beta 2 is the "biggest software download event in history" since it was released to the public as part of the Customer Preview Program on Wednesday.
Microsoft claims to be hitting the "ceilings on bandwidth" of the Internet. "Right now we are serving out product keys 10x faster than we can serve the downloads." Microsoft is concerned that if they increase their bandwidth further that it will have a measurable impact on the rest of the internet and there is a "good possibility" of affecting other events such as World Cup online viewing.
For those of you that are still waiting to download Vista Beta 2, Microsoft recommends you purchase the DVD and you will get that in 1 to 4 weeks. Additionally, if you purchase the DVD you will get a copy of RC1 when it is available in October. Other will eventually be able to download it.
On a side note, Microsoft even considered using BitTorrent as a method to distribute the Beta 2 code. "We thought about BitTorrent a lot in the planning stages", says Aaron Coldiron of Microsoft. However, Microsoft decided that it was not an option because of "legal and privacy issues."
