We are just less than two weeks away from Windows Vista’s public availability. As I said before no matter you like big blue or not, sooner or later 75% of world’s computer users will upgrade to Windows Vista. Yes most probably this upgrade will be the most expensive upgrade in OS history, since you have to count both cost of OS plus hardware upgrade. Microsoft well aware of this situation, so they are making things as easier as it possible for consumer to feel/test Vista before purchase.

  Microsoft Virtual Labs launched a new Test Drive site to help give exposure to the Windows Vista operating system in their windows Vista Virtual Labs. The test drive site allows anyone to launch and try out various scenarios in a completely isolated, sandbox environment before they purchase and install the product on their own machine. To enjoy this test drive for free your machine should have these requirements–

• Microsoft Windows XP, Windows 2000, or Windows Server 2003
• Microsoft Internet Explorer 5 or later
• Best viewed at a screen resolution of 1024×768 or greater, to avoid glitches.
• US English Language Keyboards, as the lab is in English.
• You must have cookies enabled in your browser.
• Connecting to the labs require that you have port 443 open.
• You may asked to download ActiveX(Virtual Server VRMC Advanced Control) during the test run.
• Turn off your POP-UP blocker for avoid irritating MSG in every click.

In this particular test drive, Microsoft attempts to showcase four main areas of Windows Vista Business: Safe-Efficient-Connected-Collaborative. Each of these topics contains a number of videos and labs, which all-in-all total around 18. Personally i found this test drive very helpful learning the OS, that will dominate most of the computer by next year. And as a developer i really need to understand, what most people will be using. But i do experienced few graphical problems as well as sluggish interfaces during the test runs, which is most probably due to remote host issue.

So why not test run the upcoming OS for free. After all there is no harm in test, isn’t it?