Windows 8 Beta coming soon!

Hi

The beta is rumoured to be soon (date who knows) and likely named a Customer Preview to try and get away from the beta tag, personally its still a beta and should only be installed if you understand what a beta is, in an unfinished product... sadly many do not understand this and that in part is what caused issues in the Vista public beta release.

If Windows 8 is to go public then they will have a download site link, if its a closed beta then it will be available via MS Connect if you have an account and are picked to test the OS.

TAP and other internal testers will have a close to or beta already as the timeline for W8 is narrowing to a release date of likely Nov 2012 (random guess on my part knowing the timelines of products and not insider info as even if I know them I cannot tell due to NDA agreements with MSFT)

Just also keep an eye on http://blogs.msdn.com/b/b8/ and http://windowsteamblog.com/ for info and if I get info I can post I will do.

 

In part I agree with you Bill, but from what I have seen of various internal builds its superb and does build upon Windows 7 very well, items like no need to reboot on Win Updates, if hardware changed it doesn't matter as Windows will re-find the new hardware, so saves a re-install, automatic backup and this is live backup so add a new file and it saves it, could be cloud or local storage, I could go on, but the options are in the link I left to Building W8 Blog.

The thing that is worrying me about W8 is Metro, while I love it and think its great on my Windows 7 Phone, and will be great on Tablet PCs its not a positive for a desktop PC, so the option to revert to the Windows 7 Start menu layout is crucial to its success as I do not think many will take to Metro very well (Corporates will definitely not), especially developers as they will need to have their apps developed to install as a Metro and normal Explorer app.