As the slow death of the pre-Wow Windows Vista variants draws near, Microsoft will begin sending out funeral invitations tomorrow. Towards the end of April 2007, Microsoft informed that, beginning with May 18, Windows Vista beta testers still running the beta 2, release candidate 1 and release candidate 2 versions of the operating system will start receiving notifications related to the imminent expiration date at the end of May.

The Redmond Company did not provide any statistics revealing haw many of the original testers involved in the development milestones of the operating system are still running pre-release versions of Windows Vista. Although initially, Microsoft's position was one of intransigence, with no other reward for testers than the use of the time-bombed pre-releases of Vista, the company made one concession.

Users of Vista beta 2, RC1 and RC2 will be able to switch to the final version of the platform with one of the upgrade editions, either performing an in-place upgrade or a clean install. Microsoft's strong recommendation is that users upgrade to the final variant of Vista by May 31, 2007, or switch back to Windows XP.

"After 31 May 2007, customers who continue to use pre-release versions of Windows Vista will be able to log in for 2-hour sessions to retrieve data. After 2 hours of use, the PC will automatically reboot without providing the opportunity to save data. The opportunity to log in normally for these 2-hour sessions will be available only until 28 August 2007. It is strongly recommended that PC users running any of these pre-release versions of Windows Vista migrate their PCs to the final version of Windows Vista or another operating system prior to 31 May," informed Nick white, Microsoft Product Manager back on April 24.