by Pablo Española.
Hi Brendon,
You should not be having problems downloading the 2.4.3+ installer. Since your OS is Windows 7, download this Moodle distribution package (http://download.moodle.org/download.php/windows/MoodleWindowsInstaller-latest-24.zip). As mentioned by Howard Miller, Moodle is a web server. To test it on your laptop, you should first install XAMPP v1.7.4 or later. XAMPP installs the Apache HTTP server as well as PHP and MySQL, the three essential apps for running Moodle.
On another note, since you're a post-grad student and I teach my post-grad MIS class using Moodle, I can give you access to my Moodle site at http://cms.ilahas.com. Just email me.