I found this video on YouTube by accident, it shows what happens on a day of Windows NT5 development. By the look of it it was made between Beta 1 and Beta 2. Quality is low but you can get the idea.

Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y0aEFgtUi6M

Makes me want to work as a beta tester, although I get that's a very busy job...

An interesting shot: A DEC Alpha used for testing NT5

Yes, there were Alpha builds of NT5 up to 2128 (it was already called Windows 2000, then).

Looks cool but very hard work! I think Id rather do the hardware bit. Sounds complicated on the testing and programming side.

Definitely looks like an amazing thing to do – beats all the boring jobs out there that I’ll probably end up doing! Could get a bit repetitive after a while though I guess, depending on how similar the work they have to do each day is. When the version of Windows they're working on goes gold, what do they do then? Are they just general MS coders who are sent to work on another project, or they specifically Windows coders who don't have so much to do after the release (just a few updates etc)?

One thing I wondered when they said they have computers from all a lot of the major manufacturers for testing Windows on is whether they test it on Apple systems these days (or do they only test it on systems made by their OEM partners?)

You mean on Intel-based ones? Don't know for sure, but Vista builds before 5536 required you to do some dirty work on your HD (concerning partitioning) before they'd install on the shiny new Intel Mac. With the builds starting from 5536, this has been fixed, and Vista installs fine, without a hitch. Question: Is this a coincidence or have they done actual testing and fixing?

Yes - I just thought it would be interesting if they had a Mac somewhere in the Windows lab There are certainly Macs somewhere on the MS campus though - you've probably seen that tour of MacBU that is around somewhere (the one that shows they have a cluster of about 150 Mac Minis!)

I'm quite sure they have – look at what I wrote about the Vista betas on my Intel Mac.

Unless it was just some sort of coincidence caused by Vista generally getting better? Like in the earlier builds you used to get those weird issues where you couldn't partition the disk using the options for doing so in the Vista installer - you had to boot with an XP CD to format first, and then restart with Vista.

That's still possible indeed.

One of the shots in the video (at 2:19) shows a build tag -- kor 1654L alpha fre.wk

This video is most likely closer to the late alpha stage of NT5.
However, the end of the video shows a Beta 1 Evaluation Copy graphic. There's a good chance that this video was produced at the early Beta 1 stage... plus, the date ©1997 Microsoft, is an additional point.

well they have to have macs for Office for Mac etc. Im pretty sure they will have some Intel Macs in the windows lab.

Did anybody hear the sneezing?

I did, and i heard coughing towards the beginning