Apparently Microsoft has released a download of 32-bit and 64-bit Windows 8 pre-beta following its recent BUILD conference. It seems they decided to get the jump on people who leaked the preview by just offering it themselves; I bet they'll win out in feedback and hype in the long run. I plan to install it in a virtual machine to try it out; anyone else?

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/apps/br229516

Hmm, interesting. I'll grab it, maybe see what it's like on some other machine. Not like I'm lacking in computers these days. :p

Hmm, I might do that as well, though I'll probably never upgrade any of my computers to Windows 8.

Here's the link you neglected to include:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/home/
(argh, ninja'd)

I'll probably grab and play around with it, if only to see how the much-vaunted UI changes stack up.

I will just like I did for 7. Thanks for the post.

No problem. I personally waited until RC1 to install my Windows 7, so I got to wait a fair while before I had to upgrade to Win 7 full.

cool. I actually look forward to playing around with this. You know, in all that free time I've got >.<

Just my luck my EP121 broke yesterday, lol.

I've started the download, so I can test it when I get home (in a VM).

When I first tried to run it in a VM, I got this error message, which I thought was funny:

I'm sure HAL means something else, but I'm thinking HAL from 2001: Space Odyssey.

I'm not a fan of the smiley.

Meh, I didn't hear many good things about Win8's interface, but I shall try it on VirtualBox when I get the time later

I'll download it and bung it on my tablet given that that seems to be what Windows 8's new UI is aiming for. Thanks for the link!

HAL = Hardware Abstraction Layer.

Benryves beat me to the Hardware Abstraction Layer note. I too will share some impressions after I boot it on my office desktop's VM today. Qazz, I haven't heard anything bad per se, just that the interface changes seem unnecessary. Comic, not to feed your Apple Lover mindset, but that reminds of the Sad Mac from way way way back in the day.

That would be a frowney, it is certainly not smiling.

From what I've seen of the interface changes, they seem pretty nice. That being said, I've read some articles from whiny people about how they're terrible. It seems that having around 200 keyboard shortcuts in the file explorer is a good thing, but I guess someone people just see the ribbon and automatically assume everything is terrible because some people resist change, even if it's for the better.

So I'm trying to install Windows 8 x64 DevPrev in VMWare Player, and thus far each time I get a massive crash: vcpu-0:NOT_IMPLEMENTED vmcore/vmm/intr/apic.c:1903. It seems that everyone who tries Win8 + VMWare Player gets this result; the solution is to use VirtualBox. Take note!

Edit: And I learned that in VirtualBox, enabling IO ACPI and setting the IDE device chipset to PIIX3 is important!

Oh, I couldn't get it to work in VirtualBox. That would have been nice to know before I went and installed the thing on hardware

As it is, Windows 8 feels a bit clunky for a PC OS. I'm sure it's excellent as a Tablet OS, but the mouse/keyboard commands are different from what I'm sure most Windows users are used to with the Windows GUI.

That said, the IE10 app is pretty a fast.

Having been stuck with MeeGo up to this point (which is atrociously slow, clumsy to use and rather buggy) I am very impressed with Windows 8 as a tablet PC operating system. I'm using an EXOPC Slate and all of the hardware worked out of the box with the exception of Bluetooth (which never worked under MeeGo, so I'm not too fussed). It cold boots in under 15 seconds, which is not bad at all, and it's nice to have the ability to drop down to "real" Windows applications if you're not covered by one of the tablet-friendly ones.

I'm not sure I'd cope with the Metro UI in place of the traditional Start Menu on a desktop, though, and my gripes from Windows 7 remain there so I can't see myself rushing to buy a copy for my main PC.

Haha, touché.

[quote=KermMartian"]Comic, not to feed your Apple Lover mindset, but that reminds of the Sad Mac from way way way back in the day.[/quote]Very true, and I believe they've brought it back in one form or another.

Related to the topic, I will try Win8 on the spare drive in my computer. I've been wanting to install a Windows OS but I heard Win8 would be coming out in April 2012-ish; putting me off on buying Seven.

Windows 8 has been alright so far. I really like the new Task manager look, though I'm not a fan of the new Windows Explorer and Start menu layout. The Control Panel also gets on my nerves. It's a bit laggy in Virtualbox, but it's still bearable. The login screen isn't bad either.