James Delahunty
9 Jan 2009 21:35
Microsoft began offering downloads of a Windows 7 Beta early on Friday as had been promised by CEO Steve Ballmer in his pre-show keynote. However, it didn't take long for demand to overwhelm Microsoft's servers, forcing the company to halt the Beta downloads until more servers are added to deal with overwhelming traffic. "We are adding servers as fast as we can add them," a Microsoft spokesman said at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.
The Redmond-based software giant says Windows 7 will incorporate touch-screen technology and make the operating system much easier to personalize. The download is only available to the first 2.5 million people who download it - at least from Microsoft that is - a limit which probably caused the immediate rush.
The beta is available in English, German, Japanese, Hindi and Arabic (Hindi version is only available 32-bit). It requires at least a 1 GHz processor, 1GB of RAM, 16GB hard disk space, a DirectX 9-capable video card with 128MB memory and an Internet connection.
UPDATE: Download seems to be working fine again at: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads..