Not long ago Microsoft CEO Steve Balmer announced Windows 7 will be publicly available on Friday, Jan 9 and the day has come, time to start downloading! I have a copy downloading right now, only an hour or so to go of the 2.5 gig download! I have to say I’m excited, this is an surprising and very welcome move from Microsoft!

Once I have my hands on a copy I’ll let you guys know how it’s holding up, I’m hoping to see some speed improvements, startup/shutdown is not a huge thing for me, I shut dowm my laptop once every two weeks!

Apparently there are 2.5 million open downloads so you better get haulin’ if you want your free legal copy, just click on the links below to start downloading!

For your browsing benefit here are two direct links to the 32-bit version of Windows 7 and the 64-bit version of Windows 7 (thanks Technology Bites!).