Microsoft wasn't the only company releasing Windows 8 Consumer Preview software yesterday. If you're rocking a Radeon graphics card, you'll be happy to hear that AMD rolled out new Catalyst drivers specifically tailored for the prerelease OS, complete with support for Windows 8's WDDM 1.2 features.
Earlier today, Microsoft released the Windows 8 Consumer Preview (beta) at the 2012 Mobile World Congress (MWC) in Barcelona, giving the general public an opportunity to preview Windows 8 on existing x86 systems and provide feedback. But Microsoft’s “Consumer Preview” event wasn’t just all about the beta released today for x86-based PCs. The company also showcased a number of Windows 8 on ARM devices at today’s event. Hit the jump for more.
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.
At an earnings call last week, Hewlett-Packard CEO Meg Whitman seemed confident of her company’s holiday prospects, saying “we're going to be well-positioned for [the] holiday [season] on Windows 8 x86.” She hinted at an entire lineup of Windows 8 products from HP making it to the market in the fourth quarter. Although there is still a fairly long way to go for the holidays, the rumor mill has already started churning out stories about HP’s Windows 8 devices.
Once you post something on the Internet, it takes about a nanosecond for it be picked up by a wandering Web surfer with his or her finger on the Print Screen key, let alone Google's Web crawling bots that take cached snapshots of everything it finds. So even though Hewlett-Packard has taken down a couple of driver documents that made references to Windows 8 SKUs, we can still take a peek thanks to a pair of cached copies.
By including the touch-specific Metro UI alongside the traditional Windows desktop in its next desktop operating system, Microsoft is trying as hard as it has ever done to appeal to the tablet crowd. But its newfound enthusiasm for touch will not mean a lot if developers fail to respond just as enthusiastically. It’s important that developers deliver a consistent and easy-to-use experience across the Metro app ecosystem. To this end, Microsoft has just released a four-page PDF titled Windows 8 Touch Guidance for developers.
The Windows logo has evolved over the years, but has always followed a carefully crafted theme. The Iconic Windows Flag is one of the most recognizable logos of our generation, being printed literally billions of times on the stickers we find plastered to our cases and laptops, as well as the ever so handy start key on just about every keyboard made in the last 10 years. Love it or leave it, everyone knew it, and isn’t that the whole point? Apparently not, as Microsoft has now publically declared their intent to 
With the release of Windows 8 widely expected to happen later this year, we have a lot to look forward to. The next version of Microsoft’s operating system is unique for its inclusion of a touch-friendly UI, called Metro, in addition to the classic Windows desktop environment that we have all gotten so used to over the years. Microsoft may have used college interns to develop sample Metro-style apps for the Windows 8 developer preview build, but you can look forward to seeing a number of triple-A third party apps at the time of Window 8’s launch. One such app will be Mozilla’s Firefox web browser.
Last week, a post on the Building Windows 8 blog gave a detailed account of Microsoft’s Windows on ARM (WOA) effort. Seeing as WOA is going to be the first Microsoft product of its kind, it was hardly a surprise to see the said post generate a considerable amount of buzz. According to MS, it aims to deliver a “no-compromise” experience with WOA, one that feels “just like using Windows 8 on x86/64.” Even though the latest blog post by the Windows engineering team also deals with delivering a consistent experience, the context is completely different this time.
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