Did you know that while the average consumers are still waiting for Windows Vista's general availability on January 30, 2007 in order to get their hands on the operating system, there are families that have been using the operating system for over two years? Microsoft has selected a total of 50 families on top of the millions of beta testers that have participated in the development process of Windows Vista, to deploy and use the operating system in a home based environment.

"We wanted to make sure that our key customers were involved from the beginning," stated Trish Miner, research manager for Microsoft. "We also wanted to make sure that everything they wanted to do they could do easily."

The 50 families participated in the "Life with Windows Vista" program, although when they signed up it was referred to as "Life with Windows Longhorn." "End-to-end scenarios were very important for us. We did Vista design and implementation based on the feedback and also used the feedback to validate our assumptions" on what features worked or didn't," revealed Richard Russell, developer manager of Microsoft's Core Operating System Division.

Via the "Life with Windows Vista" program, Microsoft kept a close contact with all the families testing Vista, in order to ensure that the operating system will integrate seamlessly into the everyday, mundane life of a user family.

According to data from the Redmond Company, the 50 families involved in the project are responsible for identifying no less than 800 bugs in the operating system throughout the duration of the program.