Head to the Intel Professional Developer Conference in Los Angeles this October and you will walk out with a 160GB HDD with a pile of programs on it, including an alpha of Windows 7.  The rest of us still have to wait until sometime in 2009; though Ballmer would prefer you would buy a couple of copies of Vista in the mean time.  Ars Technica gives a run down of what we know about Windows 7 along with the information on the ‘pre-beta’.

“Attendees at Microsoft’s Professional Developer Conference next month are in for a treat: everyone going will get a 160GB hard disk with a copy of all the software on show, including Windows 7. “Software + Services” is the company’s big idea at this PDC, and, as previously announced, Microsoft will be showing off—and giving out—a new cloud computing framework. Related Stories

Though there’s sure to be interest in the cloud computing software, the software giveaway just got a whole lot more exciting with the news that attendees will receive a “pre-beta” build of Windows 7. Mindful of the lukewarm reception that Windows Vista received on its eventual release, Microsoft has thus far kept quiet about the next version of Windows; this time around, the company wants to make sure that expectations match with the software that will actually be released.”

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