Customer Preview Program (CPP) participant or Technical Beta Tester?
They are two different programs with different purposes and management.
The Technical Beta management gave Vista to participants who submitted at
least one bug.
The management of the CPP did not do the same for CPP participants.
If you participated in these public newsgroups without access to the private
Vista newsgroups, you were most probably not a Technical Beta tester.
However if you were a Technical Beta tester, you should have received an
Email with download details for Vista.
Access the Vista private newsgroups for more information if this applies to
you.