Only "free" if you bought a PC it was offered with. Not all PCs and not
all manufacturers offer it. Most that offer it are on purchaces in July
to January or so.
I would also hold off on loading it, let others do the beta testing and
Beta testing is long over.
I'll report that I ran the release candidate from the end of April
when it became available until I switched to the RTM version when it
became available on August 6. It's been completely stable, and I've
been very happy with it.
I completely disagree with this point of view. The point in time
when a service pack is released is at the discretion of Microsoft and
is completely arbitrary. Upgrades and fixes to any version of Windows
are released when needed--once a month, normally, but more often when
necessary. At some arbitrary point, Microsoft decides to roll up all
those upgrades and fixes into one package and calls the result a
service pack.
There's no particular significance to when that service pack is
released, and it doesn't mark a special point of stability. There were
upgrades before it and there will be more upgrades after it. Since it
has no particular significance, treating it as a special event, and
waiting for it, is meaningless.
If you want to wait some period of *time* (six months, a year,
whatever) rather than for a service pack, before getting Windows 7,
that makes much more sense. However, I've been running Windows 7 RTM
here since it was released, and I can report that it's been completely
stable, and I've had no problems with it at all.