Redmond confirmed this week that they will give preview copies of Win7 to attendees at next month's Professional Developers Conference. They posted on the PDC Web site that devs would get a "pre-beta" release Oct 28th. "Keynote attendees will be among the first to receive the pre-beta build of Windows 7," they said. Steven Sinofsky, Senior VP of the Windows Engineering group will deliver the keynote on Oct. 28. Here is the link to the PDC website:
http://www.wservernews.com/7LIJQ4/080929-Unveiling-Windows-7