The Windows 8 Customer Preview is now available...
http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows-8/consumer-preview
For those of you who are curious... here are my findings after an hour:
I'm running it in Oracle VM VirtualBox and would strongly advise trying it through some kind of virtualization setup. For one thing, it is still in the beta process, so some things are going to be broken. However, the bigger reason not to make this your primary OS is that there are a lot of changes, and the new Metro interface is going to take a lot of getting used to. Metro can be disabled, and it looks and acts a lot like Windows 7 after that.
Metro is the same interface used on the new Windows phones, so it is geared towards touch screens and feels strange on a normal PC. Running non-metro apps dumps you back into a paired down desktop interface that looks similar to Windows 7, with no start menu. Switching back and forth feels strange since you are constantly being kicked in and out of Metro.
Controls are hidden in Metro apps, so they look very simple. For example, to search within an app or get to the settings menu, hold your mouse at the upper right corner of the screen and the menus will appear on the right side of the app.
At this point, Metro is suited for light home use, and won't be ready for business use until it sees some more refinement and until more applications can run on it... a new version of Office is on the way. Even then, the lack of a traditional windowing concept for looking at multiple applications at one time could be very annoying. Basically, it makes a PC feel like a tablet. I'm not sure how well power users and business users are going to like this. Then again, for those who want to just check their email and browse the web, this might not be such a bad thing.
I'm going to play around with it for a while and see how the beta progresses before making a judgement on the changes.
http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows-8/consumer-preview
For those of you who are curious... here are my findings after an hour:
I'm running it in Oracle VM VirtualBox and would strongly advise trying it through some kind of virtualization setup. For one thing, it is still in the beta process, so some things are going to be broken. However, the bigger reason not to make this your primary OS is that there are a lot of changes, and the new Metro interface is going to take a lot of getting used to. Metro can be disabled, and it looks and acts a lot like Windows 7 after that.
Metro is the same interface used on the new Windows phones, so it is geared towards touch screens and feels strange on a normal PC. Running non-metro apps dumps you back into a paired down desktop interface that looks similar to Windows 7, with no start menu. Switching back and forth feels strange since you are constantly being kicked in and out of Metro.
Controls are hidden in Metro apps, so they look very simple. For example, to search within an app or get to the settings menu, hold your mouse at the upper right corner of the screen and the menus will appear on the right side of the app.
At this point, Metro is suited for light home use, and won't be ready for business use until it sees some more refinement and until more applications can run on it... a new version of Office is on the way. Even then, the lack of a traditional windowing concept for looking at multiple applications at one time could be very annoying. Basically, it makes a PC feel like a tablet. I'm not sure how well power users and business users are going to like this. Then again, for those who want to just check their email and browse the web, this might not be such a bad thing.
I'm going to play around with it for a while and see how the beta progresses before making a judgement on the changes.
