In the last week or so I've received a few questions related to the product activation experinece in the Windows 7 Beta and what, if anything, changes now that Microsoft is no longer offering broadly new downloads of the beta. First, I would like to point out that while the downloads are no longer available people who already have the image can obtain product keys for activation from the Windows 7 Beta site. Now that the beta download has ended and we're more than 30 days past the beginning of the broad availability of the beta some users of the beta might start to interact more with the activation experience in the beta. Specifically i'm going to address the part that occurs once the 30 day grace period has passed and the system still hasn't been activated. I'll go into more detail below but the summary is that while we've improved it in a number of ways it is based largely on the experience that is part of Windows Vista SP1.