Hey Microsoft, I'm a UK Partner, how do I get RTM'd?

Now that Vista and Office have hit gold, more and more partners have been asking, particularly at the EVO Roadshows (Which you can still register for) where they can get their hands on a copy of the RTM beauties, so that they can try to reproduce the infamous McSpirit 10-minute Speed Demo for their customers...

Well, here is where you, as a Microsoft Partner, can get your hands on the shiny software:

1. If you have a subscription to MSDN, you can get them both from here.
2. If you have a subscription for TechNet, again, you can get them both from here.
3. Internal Microsoft teams can sponsor customers/partners for MSDN subscription, see here for details.
4. If you are an ISV, Independent Software Vendor, 'Empower for ISV’s' entitles your ISV to receive one MSDN Premium Subscription Media Kit and five user licenses. See here for details.

If you still can't get hold of the RTM code using the methods above, yet you still want to demo the the life out of Vista and Office, (The McSpirit Speed-Demo is copyrighted, ok? ;-) ), then fear not, I have the answer.

So, what is this?  Well, it's the Windows Vista Demo Readiness Toolkit, and is the perfect way to demonstrate customer scenarios, all the tools and features of both Vista and Office, and best of all, setting it up is an absolute doddle.

Simply boot from the DVD (making sure that you have backed up your data first, as the install wipes the machine and creates the relevant partitions for the demo) and go and have a cuppa, and when you come back, you should have a nice swanky system, partitioned correctly, with the relevant users set up, and a demo script included, which allows you to become a fully fledged Speed-Demo-er in no time!

But I haven't got a spare machine, I hear you cry?  Well, problem solved.  Back up all of your data, onto a removable disk for example, and install the DRT, and when complete, shrink the main system partition to one that will give you enough space to install another instance of Vista, and you can subsequently dual-boot between a demo machine, and a work machine.  Simple!  You can find full details on how to do this here.

For more information on what the DRT allows you to demo, pay a visit to James's blog.  Ok Ok, I'm super-excited...Where can I, as a MS Partner, get this cool tool...

Your wish is my command