Windows 7 beta available for public download

IDG News Service - Microsoft Corp. made the Windows 7 beta available for public download Saturday after its servers were overwhelmed by users trying to download the operating system.

On its Windows 7 site, the company posted a note saying, "The Windows 7 Beta is now available for download." The Windows 7 site lists a page where the beta can be downloaded.

On Friday, Microsoft struggled to keep its Web site online as users overloaded the company's servers. Microsoft's main Web site and the download page were often unreachable.

"Due to very heavy traffic we're seeing as a result of interest in the Windows 7 Beta, we are adding some additional infrastructure support to the Microsoft.com properties before we post the public beta," the company said on its official Windows blog Friday.

At the keynote at the International CES in Las Vegas on Wednesday, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer said Friday would be the date for beta rollout.

Company officials said activation keys for the code would be capped at 2.5 million, but users who try the beta after that limit is reached will be able to trial it for at least 30 days.

Microsoft says the version of Windows 7 available now is "feature complete," which means that the functionality of the operating system will not change much, if at all.

The new version of Windows appears to be require less of a jump up in hardware capability than Vista did.

The minimum system requirements Microsoft suggests for beta testers include a 1-GHz processor, 1GB of main memory, 16GB of available disk space and support for DX9 graphics. The suggested setup is close to what is recommended for Vista, even though the new operating system is appearing several years after its predecessor.