One of the perils of reviewing tech products is that you actually have to use them. And when it comes to prerelease software and even hardware, there's always a steady stream of upcoming products winding its way through the Thurrott household. Sometimes, I even get to share with the family.

Such was the case over the past two weeks, during which time I inflicted on them the public version of Microsoft's Windows Vista Beta 2. As we discussed here a few weeks back, Microsoft has made the Beta 2 version of Windows Vista available for free to anyone with a broadband connection. And though I wouldn't normally ask anyone I care about to run beta Microsoft software, we actually use an HP Media Center PC as our primary TV interface, and have been using Microsoft's XP Media Center since the first beta of the first version, way back in early 2002. For my young kids, Media Center *is* television. They've never know any other way of interacting with televised content.

So what better way to put the Vista version of Media Center through its paces than to install Windows Vista Beta 2 on the Media Center PC and let my entire family enjoy the testing process as much as I do? After all, this is the ultimate real-world test.