Ok, now see, this I don't buy. Not for a second will I believe that the inital "leak" was anything less than ordered by Balmer himself. I think MS is seeing that they have a really good product on their hands with Windows 7 and wanted to get it out there as soon as possible without having to offically support it before they were ready. Free testing and good word of mouth from said testing to counter Vista's bad rep, AND lots and lots of publicity from the press' reporting of the "leak"
Brilliant, just brilliant.
Like I said earlier MS has been publicly urging the public to test it so your assertion dead on, they don’t care right now you get it, just get it and test it. You get a free OS(temporarily) and MS get’s free testers, a win win for both parties.