They did the same thing with XP pro and it still took over a year after full release before SP2 came out (IIRC closer to two years) personally I am teaching myself Linux right now so I can go with Lindows and just debug any issues as they come up

Beta testing gets rid of initial major issues the security exploits and everything wont be known until hackers get ahold of it and people that dont have regular maintainance schedules on thier PCs (like a corporate enviornment does) get in there and start screwing things up