FamilyLink is now providing all the original images of the entire 1940 US Census free of charge. The site now contains all the images covering the 132 million people who lived in the USA in April 1940. In a brief test, I found that the site was not busy or swamped with users. I found my grandparents, a bunch of cousins, and a number of other people I knew in later years when I was growing up. The images always appeared quickly.
Of course, the images are not indexed at this time. None of the sites hosting the 1940 census images have images yet, although several are working on adding indexes within a few months. FamilyLink does already have a searchable name index but it is still very small, although growing quickly. In the meantime, the best approach is to browse by State, County, City, or Enumeration District and go through the census images, until you find the people you're looking for.
FamilyLink does promise to add to the index every day until it covers the entire census and all people within it will be searchable by name.
You can access the free 1940 U.S. census images at http://www.familylink.com/
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