Windows 8 Consumer Preview Goes Live

Posted 02/29/2012 at 11:06am | by Brad Chacos

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The slow, relentless trek towards the release of Windows 8 continues. The Developer Preview released several months back was nifty, but a bit rough around the edges -- as you would expect from an early build created for development use. Now, after months of rumors, tidbits and news about features that weren't included in the Developer Preview, you'll finally get a chance to try many of them out for yourself. Today, Microsoft unveiled the more polished and user friendly Windows 8 Consumer Preview.

Here are links to the standard Windows 8 Consumer Preview setup files and another page that offers Windows 8 CP ISO images. The images are fairly big -- 2.5GB for the 32-bit version and 3.3GB for the 64-bit version -- so expect to be downloading for a while if you have a slower connection.  The hardware requirements are as lax as Windows 7's. From the big ol' FAQ Microsoft released for the Consumer Preview:

• Processor: 1 gigahertz (GHz) or faster
• RAM: 1 gigabyte (GB) (32-bit) or 2 GB (64-bit)
• Hard disk space: 16 GB (32-bit) or 20 GB (64-bit)
• Graphics card: Microsoft DirectX 9 graphics device or higher
• To use touch, you need a tablet or a monitor that supports multitouch.
• To access the Windows Store and to download and run apps, you need an active Internet connection and a screen resolution of at least 1024 x 768.
• To snap apps, you need a screen resolution of at least 1366 x 768.

We haven't had a chance to play around with the Consumer Preview too much yet (stupid work!) but hey, let's make this a group effort: if you go hands-on with the latest flavor of Windows 8, share your impressions with your fellow geeks in the comments below.