Windows 7 Public Beta to be released Friday, Jan. 9th

It seems that the Windows 7 public beta will be announced/released tomorrow at the 2009 CES event during Steve Ballmer’s keynote. Previous predictions had put the beta release before/on the Jan. 5th, but since it has been quiet it’s only logical that it will be announced at the CES event tomorrow.

Note: Neowin reports that you’ll be able to watch Ballmer’s keynote live via 100K, 300K, and 750K streams. The keynote is expected to start tomorrow at 6:30PM PST. Don’t forget to synchronize your watches!

Image courtesy of www.winsupersite.com

If you are interested in trying out the beta, be sure to watch this page for the download link to be available. The description and placeholder for the Windows 7 public beta can already be seen here — the Taiwanese page for the TechNet Evaluation Center; however, the link is still unavailable.

For those who have not been following the development of Windows 7 real closely, I suggest reading this review by Paul Thurrott. The review should give you some ideas of what kind of things you’ll see in Windows 7, though I personally don’t agree with his stance on the superbar (Windows 7 evolved taskbar).

Update: People are reporting that TechNet and MSDN subscribers are able to download the beta now. The beta is in-fact build 7000, compiled 12/12/08 which has already appeared on torrent sites for several days now. However, it appears that Windows 7 Beta 1 will be publicly released on Friday, January 9th.