Desperate beta testers brought down Microsoft's Windows 7 download page yesterday for about two hours.

Only Microsoft Developer Network members and TechNet members were offered keys, but Microsoft still had to make some changes to keep the site up and running. The MSDN blog said "systems are having trouble keeping up" and thanked people for their patience.

The Release Candidate code will be available to the great unwashed public from 5 May.

Windows 7 Server is also available for testing.

Tip of the hat to Ed Bott, who reckoned the crash was caused by an SQL database falling over thanks to too many requests. The site got a week's traffic in less than hour.

It emerged yesterday that the final code is due for release in autumn 2009.

Microsoft's Windows 7 page is here. ®