Windows 7 Wallpapers: Dirty Trick Exposed

Today I came across a link to a web page that purported to make available various wallpapers included in the Windows 7 releases to date. That page is located here. More specifically, the downloads referenced are located here.

However, if you were to open that link, you would likely find yourself confronted by an unsightly window requiring you to complete an online survey prerequisite to access of the wallpapers. I hate online surveys. The corrupted, beastly things are laden with bloated spam offers. Never, NEVER sacrifice your personal email address to these bloodsucking devices (if the need should arise, I suggest a disposable email such as offered by mailinator.com). And, after a cursory review of the comments at the bottom of the page, I see an attempted justification of the survey requirement... to avoid server shutdown. LAME!!!

Ha. Allow me to provide anyone interested with the direct download links to the zip packages containing the wallpapers (with the exception of the RC1 wallpaper download, which appears to be MIA). Actually, even if you have no interest in the wallpapers, I would suggest pure spite as a motivation to avail yourself of the downloads. A protest of the sick and juvenile institution of an online survey.

So, to get down to business. There are a few methods available to circumvent the undesirable restrictions. Being the rookie operation this apparently is, you can simply view the source of the page, and pick out at your leisure the download URLs which they carelessly leave lying around. Alternatively, you can copy the source, edit the scripts out, and reload the then uninhibited page. Furthermore, I imagine the use of NoScript or some such apparatus would effectively render the script nugatory.

For your convenience, though, I will post the links here:

http://windows7-wallpaper.com/wallpapers/windows7wallpaper.zip
http://windows7-wallpaper.com/wallpapers/rc1wallpaper.zip
http://windows7-wallpaper.com/wallpapers/win7build7000.zip

Note: I include the RC1 link in the event it should be restored to functionality, for which we may certainly hope if we wish to experience such content as referenced here.

Enjoy.

Update: the RC1 link appears to be working now.