I skipped both XP and Vista. But all the hype about windows 7 got me curious, so I donwloaded the beta. I installed it as a virtual machine using Virtualbox, but it won’t connect to the network. So it’s DOA, as far as I’m concerned.
I got the network to work in VirtualBox just fine.
Did you install the guest additions?
http://twoguystech.com/blog/art/installing-windows-7-beta-suns-virtualbox