Windows 7 free-for-all after Friday's false start

 

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By Barry Collins

Posted on 12 Jan 2009 at 07:56

Microsoft says the Windows 7 beta will be made available to anyone who wants it, after a surge of traffic forced the company to delay its launch by a day.

Click here to download the Windows 7 beta

Microsoft had originally planned to make the beta available to only 2.5 million testers, creating a huge rush to the company's website on launch day. Visitors to the Microsoft site were greeted with blank pages or 404 error messages on Friday.

The huge demand forced the company to delay the public release of the beta software until Saturday.

To avoid swamping the site once more, Microsoft announced it was lifting the limit on the beta downloads.

"Due to an enormous surge in demand, the download experience was not ideal so we listened and took the necessary steps to ensure a good experience," Microsoft's Brandon Le Blanc wrote on the Windows Blog.

"We have clearly heard that many of you want to check out the Windows 7 Beta and, as a result, we have decided remove the initial 2.5 million limit on the public beta for the next two weeks (thru 24 January). During that time you will have access to the beta even if the download number exceeds the 2.5 million unit limit."

Beta specs

The release of the beta heralds the first time that Microsoft has issued minimum specs for the next-generation operating system.

Microsoft promised that Windows 7 would run on any machine capable of handling Vista, and the specs appear to bear that out.

The company recommends a minimum 1GHz processor (either 32-bit or 64-bit), 1GB of RAM, 16GB of hard disk space, support for DirectX 9 graphics with 128MB of graphics memory to support Aero, and a DVD drive.

The beta download site warns that Windows 7 "can be glitchy - so don't use a PC you need every day." It also cautions that the beta will expire on 1 August.

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