In a continuation of a windows 7 argument, I'd be careful downloading the beta. If I'm not mystaken, it'll terminate sometime in the summer. Also, I hear that it doesn't really have the programs come with it, but you have to download the other programs (ie: picture viewer) seperate. Of course, I never actually downloaded the beta, just heard of it, so I may be wrong.
In other topics, I've been wondering if anyone knows some good ebooks (free) for any of the subjects:
-PHP
-Databases
-Ajax
-Javascript (NOT Java)
-C++
-etc;
Thanks!