The Windows Vista beta is out in the open and over 20,000 testers are now pawing all over it.

The long-awaited first beta for the Windows Vista client release, which was formerly known as Longhorn, officially goes live Wednesday, hitting some 20,000 technical beta testers.

Microsoft also Wednesday released the first beta of the as-yet un-renamed Windows "Longhorn" Server to a limited number of participants in the technical beta program, including hardware manufacturers, OEMs, independent hardware vendors, system builders, independent software vendors and developers.

This news article was written on July 27, 2005, quoting eWEEK.