Windows 8 operating system recently introduced by Microsoft. Companies from the United States are also invited developers to download a preview of Windows 8. Fun, the public can also try it. Microsoft posted a Windows 8 download link on the Windows 8 Developer Preview website.
But this is still pre-beta version, so the downloaders who want to try must be prepared if a lot of bugs or instability. Yes, this version is still far from perfect. The downloads, which range from 2.8GB to 4.8GB in size, come with no restrictions, a company spokeswoman confirmed earlier in the day.
Microsoft gave customers their most-detailed look yet at the new operating system during a two-and-a-half-hour presentation at its BUILD Windows conference, which opened Tuesday and runs through Friday.
When Microsoft debuted a similar developers preview of Windows 7 in October 2008, the company limited the early look to attendees at its Professional Developers Conference (PDC), and told the general public to wait for a beta early the next year.
Within hours, the Windows 7 preview leaked to online file-sharing sites.
Microsoft has made such leaks moot by offering Windows 8 itself.
On a new Windows Dev Center site, Microsoft provided links to three different versions of Windows 8.
The largest weighs in at 4.8GB and is a 64-bit edition that also includes developer tools such as a preview of Microsoft Visual Studio 11 Express and the SDK (software developers kit) for Metro-style applications.
Metro is Microsoft's name for the Windows 8 tile-based interface that borrows heavily from Windows Phone 7.
Two other editions, a 64-bit version (3.6GB) and a 32-bit version (2.8GB) of the operating system, can also be downloaded.
All are available as a disk image in .iso format that must be copied onto a DVD or USB flash drive for installation purposes.
The preview requires a PC with 1GB of RAM (2GB for the 64-bit edition) and 16GB of hard drive space (20GB for 64-bit).
To install Windows 8 and the developers tools, users must overwrite the machine's current operating system (XP, Vista or Windows 7) with a clean install. The smaller sans-tools versions, however, can be installed while retaining the files, user accounts and settings on a Vista- or Windows 7-powered PC.
As it typically does when it releases early-look software, Microsoft warned casual users to steer clear of Windows 8.
"The software is provided as is, and you bear the risk of using it," said Microsoft on the download website. "It may not be stable, operate correctly or work the way the final version of the software will. It should not be used in a production environment."
Interested? Please visit this link.
What we do get is the Windows 8 experience. The Start menu is replaced by the tile-based Start screen – which is designed for touch but does will work well with a mouse or even the arrow keys if you don’t mind moving more slowly. That’s the view you stay in as long as you only run the new Metro apps. These can be written in XAML languages, such as C# and Silverlight, or in HTML 5, CSS and JavaScript. Metro apps must also use the new APIs for sharing content with other apps, searching inside apps, pulling data from sensors such as GPS receivers and getting access to the file system.
On the demonstration hardware we saw, the gestures in both the Start screen and the traditional desktop felt smooth, fluid and easy to work with. In the Metro view of Internet Explorer 10 swiping in from the top or bottom gives you access to the tabs and the address bar, with the option to open in the desktop view to access settings. This is the third platform preview of IE 10 and it’s still beta code, but the hardware acceleration makes it a fast browser, standards support looks good and it still supports familiar plug-ins such as Flash and Silverlight.
Swiping in from the left switches between running apps; swiping from the right of the screen opens a strip of 'charms' that let you search, share content, manage devices, change settings and flip between the Start screen and the desktop view. You can see two apps on screen at once in the touch interface, one as a 'stripe', the other in a larger full view – and you still have standard Aero Snap in the desktop view. Make the desktop the thinner app and you get thumbnails of running apps you can tap.
Explorer and Task Manager have more finger-friendly interfaces; Explorer uses the ribbon and Task Manager shows a heat map of resource usage, including for recent apps. Thanks to the same fuzzy targeting as Windows Phone, it’s easy to tap even small buttons on the desktop with your finger; if you do have problems you can tap with a stylus, which also gives you the same powerful handwriting recognition as Windows 7. That’s something Microsoft says we’ll see on the ARM version too and this could a Windows 8 tablet a good choice for taking notes in meetings and drawing diagrams.
The Store for Metro apps isn’t ready yet and neither were the updated Windows Live apps. It's easier to activate Windows 8 PCs from Active Directory, but users can also log into a new PC with a Windows Live account, which immediately gives them a password and syncs settings like their desktop background and browser history to any other PCs they use with the same account.
There are some welcome security improvements. Anti-malware software – both Microsoft Security Essentials and third-party tools – can load earlier in the boot process without affecting the fast boot times (just a few seconds on test systems) and PCs with UEFI can authenticate boot components against stored certificates. PCs with TPM can store hashes of startup processes to validate the boot process. IE’s SmartScreen application reputation system is now used to check downloaded executables as well as those copied over from USB flash drives. BitLocker now only encrypts hard drive sectors with data in, which should improve performance.
Performance was generally good on our test system, although we did notice issues with some Metro apps crashing or failing to load correctly at times. System requirements for Windows 8 are modest: 1GB of RAM, a 1GHz processor and a DirectX 9 compatible graphics chip. Microsoft claims memory usage is lower because identical pages of memory are only stored once (for example several apps containing the same runtime will effectively load only one copy into memory) and we did see slightly lower figures for similar systems compared to Windows 7, but this will vary significantly depending on usage.
Built-in Hyper-V support is intended for developers, but it also gives power users more options too; it’s an optional component which requires a restart and you can lock it down by policy if you don’t want to support it.
Windows To Go allows you to run Windows 8 from a USB stick, so you can give users with shared PCs a flash drive with their apps and settings on; when they pull the drive out of a PC their Windows session freezes so no-one else can access it if they forget to log off. It doesn’t crash though, so if they reinsert the flash drive they can carry on working - the system runs slowly for a minute or so while recovering state, but it does recover.
here’s also a finger-friendly Metro Remote Desktop app; even the credential screen is Metro-style. This connected happily to a Windows 2008 R2 Server and we were able to drive the server interface by touch (although it obviously wasn’t as responsive as the local Windows 8 desktop).
But this is still pre-beta version, so the downloaders who want to try must be prepared if a lot of bugs or instability. Yes, this version is still far from perfect. The downloads, which range from 2.8GB to 4.8GB in size, come with no restrictions, a company spokeswoman confirmed earlier in the day. Microsoft gave customers their most-detailed look yet at the new operating system during a two-and-a-half-hour presentation at its BUILD Windows conference, which opened Tuesday and runs through Friday.
When Microsoft debuted a similar developers preview of Windows 7 in October 2008, the company limited the early look to attendees at its Professional Developers Conference (PDC), and told the general public to wait for a beta early the next year.
Within hours, the Windows 7 preview leaked to online file-sharing sites.
Microsoft has made such leaks moot by offering Windows 8 itself.
On a new Windows Dev Center site, Microsoft provided links to three different versions of Windows 8.
The largest weighs in at 4.8GB and is a 64-bit edition that also includes developer tools such as a preview of Microsoft Visual Studio 11 Express and the SDK (software developers kit) for Metro-style applications.
Metro is Microsoft's name for the Windows 8 tile-based interface that borrows heavily from Windows Phone 7.
Two other editions, a 64-bit version (3.6GB) and a 32-bit version (2.8GB) of the operating system, can also be downloaded.
All are available as a disk image in .iso format that must be copied onto a DVD or USB flash drive for installation purposes.
The preview requires a PC with 1GB of RAM (2GB for the 64-bit edition) and 16GB of hard drive space (20GB for 64-bit).
To install Windows 8 and the developers tools, users must overwrite the machine's current operating system (XP, Vista or Windows 7) with a clean install. The smaller sans-tools versions, however, can be installed while retaining the files, user accounts and settings on a Vista- or Windows 7-powered PC.
As it typically does when it releases early-look software, Microsoft warned casual users to steer clear of Windows 8.
"The software is provided as is, and you bear the risk of using it," said Microsoft on the download website. "It may not be stable, operate correctly or work the way the final version of the software will. It should not be used in a production environment."
Interested? Please visit this link.
What we do get is the Windows 8 experience. The Start menu is replaced by the tile-based Start screen – which is designed for touch but does will work well with a mouse or even the arrow keys if you don’t mind moving more slowly. That’s the view you stay in as long as you only run the new Metro apps. These can be written in XAML languages, such as C# and Silverlight, or in HTML 5, CSS and JavaScript. Metro apps must also use the new APIs for sharing content with other apps, searching inside apps, pulling data from sensors such as GPS receivers and getting access to the file system.
On the demonstration hardware we saw, the gestures in both the Start screen and the traditional desktop felt smooth, fluid and easy to work with. In the Metro view of Internet Explorer 10 swiping in from the top or bottom gives you access to the tabs and the address bar, with the option to open in the desktop view to access settings. This is the third platform preview of IE 10 and it’s still beta code, but the hardware acceleration makes it a fast browser, standards support looks good and it still supports familiar plug-ins such as Flash and Silverlight.
Swiping in from the left switches between running apps; swiping from the right of the screen opens a strip of 'charms' that let you search, share content, manage devices, change settings and flip between the Start screen and the desktop view. You can see two apps on screen at once in the touch interface, one as a 'stripe', the other in a larger full view – and you still have standard Aero Snap in the desktop view. Make the desktop the thinner app and you get thumbnails of running apps you can tap.
Explorer and Task Manager have more finger-friendly interfaces; Explorer uses the ribbon and Task Manager shows a heat map of resource usage, including for recent apps. Thanks to the same fuzzy targeting as Windows Phone, it’s easy to tap even small buttons on the desktop with your finger; if you do have problems you can tap with a stylus, which also gives you the same powerful handwriting recognition as Windows 7. That’s something Microsoft says we’ll see on the ARM version too and this could a Windows 8 tablet a good choice for taking notes in meetings and drawing diagrams.
The Store for Metro apps isn’t ready yet and neither were the updated Windows Live apps. It's easier to activate Windows 8 PCs from Active Directory, but users can also log into a new PC with a Windows Live account, which immediately gives them a password and syncs settings like their desktop background and browser history to any other PCs they use with the same account.
There are some welcome security improvements. Anti-malware software – both Microsoft Security Essentials and third-party tools – can load earlier in the boot process without affecting the fast boot times (just a few seconds on test systems) and PCs with UEFI can authenticate boot components against stored certificates. PCs with TPM can store hashes of startup processes to validate the boot process. IE’s SmartScreen application reputation system is now used to check downloaded executables as well as those copied over from USB flash drives. BitLocker now only encrypts hard drive sectors with data in, which should improve performance.
Performance was generally good on our test system, although we did notice issues with some Metro apps crashing or failing to load correctly at times. System requirements for Windows 8 are modest: 1GB of RAM, a 1GHz processor and a DirectX 9 compatible graphics chip. Microsoft claims memory usage is lower because identical pages of memory are only stored once (for example several apps containing the same runtime will effectively load only one copy into memory) and we did see slightly lower figures for similar systems compared to Windows 7, but this will vary significantly depending on usage.
Built-in Hyper-V support is intended for developers, but it also gives power users more options too; it’s an optional component which requires a restart and you can lock it down by policy if you don’t want to support it.
Windows To Go allows you to run Windows 8 from a USB stick, so you can give users with shared PCs a flash drive with their apps and settings on; when they pull the drive out of a PC their Windows session freezes so no-one else can access it if they forget to log off. It doesn’t crash though, so if they reinsert the flash drive they can carry on working - the system runs slowly for a minute or so while recovering state, but it does recover.
here’s also a finger-friendly Metro Remote Desktop app; even the credential screen is Metro-style. This connected happily to a Windows 2008 R2 Server and we were able to drive the server interface by touch (although it obviously wasn’t as responsive as the local Windows 8 desktop).
BlackBerry Desktop Manager for Mac v2.0 has only been in the Beta Zone for 2 weeks and it is already fully baked. Adam over @
For all you folks running the CyaongenMod brand of custom ROM -- and if you're not, you really should give them a shot -- know that CM6.1 has just be released. Released as in stable Android 2.2.1, ready to go, flash at your convenience.
RIM keeps on rolling with Desktop Manager for Mac. They have just opened up a new program in the BlackBerry Beta Zone for Desktop Manager for Mac v2.0. From what I can tell it seems like this program is limited to North America only but let us know if you manage to get into it from other continents.
