My my it’s definitely been an interesting ride with Vista. I’ve been following it for quite some time. The first build I *ahem* acquired was 4008 (I’ve got the disc sitting around here somewhere). Granted back then it was basically XP with some borked extras, it was fun to play around with something that would become the “norm” in the future. Since then, there’s been many-a-build. I’ve shamelessly stolen this list of all the betas from MSBetas.org for your enjoyment:

Build 3683 – Leaked November 19, 2002. First public leak of Windows “Longhorn”. This build is from Lab 06; contained extras from the Avalon lab that are not seen in other builds (new display properties dialog box, etc). Some features were broken, such as Internet Explorer downloads. (lab06_N.020923-1821)
Build 3718 – Leaked April 30, 2004. (lab06_N.021119-1730)
Build 4008 – Leaked February 28, 2003. Second leak. Contained a cleaner version of the “Plex” visual style; Internet Explorer downloads fixed, more sidebar tiles. (main.030219-1933)
*Build 4015 – Leaked April 2003. Third Leak. We prefer to call this the build from hell. Not much different from 4008, except the new style taskbar was enabled by default and could only be disabled by turning off the sidebar. This build consumed HUGE amounts of memory in very little time. (main.030328-1500)
Build 4029 – Leaked September 23, 2003. Fourth leak. Displayed the beginnings of the new style Explorer windows, contained a new sidebar clock. (main.030619-0000)
*Build 4051 – Released October 25, 2003. Released at the Professional Developer Conference, this build was supposed to be quite stable, as it was the first developer preview of Longhorn, but it ended up being horrible as far as being able to develop and test sidebar tiles went. It just leaked too much memory which hindered the ability to do anything useful with it. Introduction of the “Slate” theme, “Plex” was removed. (idx02.031001-1340)
Build 4053 – Leaked March 1, 2004. Explorer memory leak seems to have been fixed for the most part. More responsive than 4051. (main.031022-1720)
*Build 4074 – Released at the WinHEC Engineering Conference on May 4, 2004. New features include the Jade theme, more sidebar tiles, etc. (4074.idx02.040425-1535)
Build 4083 – Leaked November 10, 2005. This build is a stripped down version of Longhorn and only works on 64-bit proccessors. ( 4083.main.040516-1537 )
Build 5048 – Released at the WinHEC Conference on April 25, 2005. Memory leak seems to be non-existant now. ( 5048.winmain_idx02.050401-0536)
Build 5112 – Released to offical beta testers on July 27, 2005. First build released with the name “Windows Vista”. Includes full Aero Glass support and IE 7. First offical beta. ( 5112.winmain_beta1.050720-1600 )
*Build 5219 – Leaked from PDC 2005 on September 14th. The ISO image was found on a computer at the show and transferred to an iPod and leaked from there. This build brings back the sidebar that has been missing since 4074. ( 5219.winmain_idx02.050824-2010 )
Build 5231 – Two builds of 5231 exist in the wild. The 5231 Winmain build (5231.winmain.050912-2020) is ealier and more premature than its 5231 idx (5231.winmain_idx02.051004-2120) October CTP sibling. The sidebar found in 5219 is missing in action once again.
Build 5259 – Leaked to the web as the orginal November CTP, but only TAP testers go it before the November CTP was cancelled. There have been mixed reactions over the stability of this build. (5259.winmain_idx02.051113-2100)
Build 5270 – Released December 16th, 2005 to testers as the December CTP. ( 5270.winmain_idx03.051214-1910 )
**Build 5308 – Released February 22, 2006 to testers as the February CTP. This is the long awaited “code complete” build, meaning that no more features would be implemented beyond this build.(5308.winmain_idx01.060217-2200)
Build 5342 – Released March 24, 2006 to testers as the outside of the normal CTP cycle, as Microsoft says it’s not “CTP quality.” This is primarily a bug fix release over 5308. ( 5342.winmain_idx04.060321-1730 )
Build 5381.1 – Released May 5, 2006 to testers as the outside of the normal CTP cycle yet again. ( 5381.winmain_beta2.060501-1900)
**Build 5384.4 – Released May 22, 2006 to testers as the as the official Beta 2 milestone, proclaimed “stable enough for every day use.” This build was also given to attendees at WinHEC 2006. Released to public for download and DVD order on June 7, 2006. ( 5384.winmain_beta2.060518-1455 )
Build 5456.5 – Released June 24, 2006 to testers and is the first post-Beta 2 build. Overall, the stability of this build has improved greatly over Beta 2. List view has been added back due to popular demand, and UAC has been tweaked. Parts of the OS in this build contain Pseudo-localized text, or non-english characters placed together to approximate English words. (Example can’t be shown here because Unicode encoding is not supported by our CMS.) This is used internally, is known and being addressed in future builds. (5456.5.winmain_idx03.060620-1700)
Build 5472.5 – Released July 17, 2006 to testers. This build fixes numerous bugs from previous releases. A updated nVidia driver is included in this build fixing several problems, and perfomance in Windows Media Center has been improved upon. With build 5472, Xbox 360’s can once again be used as an Extender and is now available for all regions. Includes the new Windows Aero Basic theme. (5472.5.winmain_idx01.060713-1900)
**Build 5536.16385 - Windows Vista Build 5536 was released to beta testers on The 25th of August 2006. This is the first build that truly showed what Windows Vista is capable of, and showed a great deal of improvement over previous builds. It is also “Pre-RC 1”, meaning that it was a preview of what we could have expected in Windows Vista Release Candidate 1 (RC1). This build introduced a lot of performance fixes and offered greater stability overall. The installation process was much quicker on most machines, and some people have even gotten the much desired 15-minute installation times. (5536.16385.vista_rc1.060821-1900)
Build 5552 - This build leaked on the 29th of August 2006. It was generally pretty similar to 5536, albeit with slightly more memory usage and improvements to the speed and stability of 3D Gaming.
**Build 5600.16384 - This build was released to testers on the 1st of September 2006 as the Official RC1 build. This build was of rather marked quality, and actually drew criticisms from some testers and reviewers, and was known to have somewhat poor hardware support. Stability and Memory usage where improved over previous builds. (5600.16384.vista_rc1.060829-2230)
*Build 5728.16387 - This build was released to testers on the 22nd of September 2006. This build saw a marked improvement in stability. It was both faster to start, more stable, and has still improved memory usage. DWM was also generally a lot smoother and less laggy. The Welcome Center was also improved with new icons, eliminating the use of one icon for several different items, and all of the old icons in the User folder were replaced. With this build, Microsoft neared its goal of Vista installing in 15 minutes, with some reviewers reporting that 5728 took as little as 16 minutes to do a clean install. However, performing an upgrade installation from Windows XP was still slow, sometimes taking more than an hour to complete. (5728.16387.vista_rc1.060917-1430)
**Build 5744.16384 - This was the official RC2 Build, and was released to testers on the 6th Of October 2006. It bosted a whole host of Compatibility and Stability fixes over the previous build, and a lot over RC1, and was generelly recieved very well by the testing comunity. This build was the first build from which the controversy over Patchguard arose, causing Symantec and McAffee to accuse Microsoft of being Anti-Competitive and forcing people to use products like OneCare. This issue has now largely been resolved. (5728.16387.vista_rc2.061003-1945)
Build 5840.16384 - This build was not the first RTM Escrow to be compiled, however it was the first to leak. It was compiled on the 18th of October 2006 and leaked on or around the 26th of the same month. It had a host of bugfixes over previous builds, and featured most of the final Icons and wallpapers. It was also the first leaked build with no desktop watermark. (5840.16384.061018-1900)
Build 6000.16386 - The final build. Compiled on the 2nd of November 2006, and signed off into release on the 8th of the same month. Contains the fit and polish expected and needed from an RTM build. Memory usage is up by a very small amount over build 5840, however this build is a lot more stable, and met the release target of less than 500 minor bugs (XP shipped with over 1,500) and leaked shortly after. It has so far generally been recieved well by those that have downloaded it. General retail release is expected for The 30th of January 2007.

Those in the list above with one asterisk (*) are ones I have tested. Those with two asterisks (**) are ones I still have the media for.
I remember those early builds. Build 4015 was unbearable as it chewed up memory resources almost instantly. I also believe that build had the infamous “This could take up to an hour or more” step in Windows Setup (ironically, despite Windows Time(TM) being wrong most of the time, it was right on with this estimate). As the builds proceeded, they became less-XP-like and more Vista-like. Setup was refined (thank goodness!). The sidebar came and went. And came. And went. And came back to stay (again, thank goodness!). Then came build 5536. The build that I declared my laptop free of XP for the rest of it’s existance (and so far it has stayed true). I’ve since upgraded to RC2 with no issues and I’m awaiting Pre-RTM (5840) and Final (6000) to test out and enjoy. My guess is build 6000 will require activation, so I’ll stick with 5840 for awhile since I’ll get support until release date and my key will be valid.
I’ve had this laptop running for 14 days (albeit there’s been a few suspends or hibernates) but the system still runs like I just booted it. Now thats definitely impressive and a major improvement over XP. I couldn’t imagine running XP for 14 days…

Stand by for a 5840 review and a 6000 review if we get lucky.

The end of the road is here. A time some of us thought we’d never see. Alas, the life of the beta enthusiast is never over. Bring on Windows Vienna!

~Jaker

PS–I still have some extra licenses for the beta versions (anything less than build 6000). When I signed up for the beta, I was given a key that works on 10 workstations. I also got a second key, that works on 10 more workstations. (And yes, both keys are legit) Just an FYI…

—–