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UPDATE: Seems like the download is available here and not on the official page of Windows 7.

I am very excited to get my hands on the public beta release of Windows 7. However, I am also a little skeptical as there’s a twist to the public beta release of Windows 7. According to the new floating around Windows 7 beta will be available for the first 2.5 million downloaders and to get a key to use it you’ll need to register with Microsoft.

All this is good. But how do you ensure that you’ll be among the first 2.5 million people. Well, I have prep my system to keep a track of it and to intimate me as soon as the release is out. How did I do that, well it’s when open source comes handy. This is what I did.

  1. I know the page (at least I think so)where there will the news and an update on release of Windows 7 to the public. The page is the home page of Windows 7. As of now this page has nothing about the public beta release.
  2. Next, I have downloaded a Firefox extension called Update Scanner which will update a user as soon as there is any update on a specific page. Assuming that there will be information update on the home page of Windows 7 for public beta download. Update scanner will inform me about it as soon as there is any change on the page.
  3. Now to make it a little more competitive, I have setup Update Scanner to scan that page every 15 minutes and also set it to inform me of changes on the page more than 50 characters. Following is how my settings for Update Scanner looks like.

updatescannerwindows7

Assuming that it’s a common trend to update the information on the home page of a product, I have setup myself to be one of the first informers about the latest release of Windows 7 for public and hope I’ll be one of the lucky 2.5 million people.