Download Windows 7 for free from tomorrow

Users, users, users, users! Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer desperately wants users to want Windows 7. To this end, Ballmer announced at CES that the company will be putting a beta version of its latest operating system up for free download from tomorrow, Friday 9th January.

And this isn’t the usual beta-style programme, restricted to developers and other selected parties – all-comers are being invited to dive in just as soon as the download goes live (though developers, developers, developers, developers can actually get it right away from MSDN). More after the cut.

Now, if you really wanted to you could’ve already picked up Windows 7 from BitTorrent or some other file-sharing service. But that, of course, would be illegal. What Microsoft is offering here is a legitimate copy of its Vista replacement for free, albeit in a "trial" form that Ballmer described as "feature complete".

The number of downloads will be limited to 2.5 million worldwide, so we’d advise queuing early.

The company also revealed the minimum recommended system requirements for running the Windows 7 beta. In summary you’ll need a PC with a 1GHz processor, 1GB of RAM, 16GB of hard disk space, 128MB of graphics memory and a DVD-R/W drive. And if your computer doesn’t have at least these specs then we recommend you stick with Windows 3.1

UPDATE: here are the full details from the Windows Team Blog

[ Microsoft Windows 7]