For the past week or so I’ve had my head down building the outlines for Windows Vista Inside Out and Special Edition Using Office 12. Experience has taught me that the only way to write an excellent book about a new version of Office or Windows is to live with it – “dogfooding,” as the ‘Softies say. So, for the next nine months or so, I’ll be living not just in Beta Land but in Double Beta Land.
Running a beta over a beta? Am I crazy? Well, yes. What’s going to make life here even crazier is that the nondisclosure agreements associated with both programs are very different. The Windows Vista team says I can write about and show screen shots of anything in the product. The Office team says I’m skating on thin ice just telling you that I’m in the Office 12 beta program. I can work around that restriction by limiting my posts to things I read on other, publicly available sites, but still … I wish the Office team would relax those rules.
So, expect to read lots of stuff about Windows Vista in the coming months, and a lot less about Office.
Ed Bott 
Yes, you are crazy. Good luck!
We will feel enlightened in the dark.
I’m running both betas on a machine I specifically bought/built just for this purpose. I agree 100%, the only way to do it is to dogfood it – all of it on a daily usage basis. Hopefully, though, you’re getting more frequent builds… and have a machine that is easier to get needed Vista device drivers for than mine. Mine is not entirely successful… hopefully the new build (and more device drivers that will hopefully go wiht it) in a few days will be a major step up.
Do you think the reason for different NDA coverage is that the two Betas are at different levels of maturity? The Vista Beta’s been going on for a long tome now, and the current must be the public beta, while Office just came out with Beta 1.
That’s a good question, Jon. Logical as it may be, I don’t think it’s true. The Office team has always been more secretive than the Windows crew, and the current move toward openness among the Windows gang has accentuated the differences.
Ed, I think the Office folks are opening up, too, but perhaps the Windows guys are ahead of the curve. There are definitely different group personalities involved.